The Walls of Jericho
THE WALLS OF JERICHO
Rudolph Fisher
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This eBook edition 2021
First published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1928
‘One Month’s Wages’ first published in The City of Refuge (Rev. Ed.)
by the University of Missouri Press 2008
Preface first published by The X Press 1995
Introduction first published by Arno Press Inc. 1969
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Rudolph Fisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. It is presented in its original form and depicts ethnic, racial and sexual prejudices that were commonplace at the time it was written.
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Source ISBN: 9780008444358
Ebook Edition © March 2021 ISBN: 9780008444365
Version: 2021-01-21
Dedication
For Glendora—
May her laugh be silver,
like her hair
Epigraph
Joshua fit d’ battle of Jericho
And d’ walls come tumblin’ down—
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Introduction
Jericho
Uplift
Jive
Walls
Battle
Jericho
One Month’s Wages
An Introduction to Contemporary Harlemese
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the same author
About the Publisher
PREFACE
THE SUCCESSFUL young lawyer Fred Merrit’s move onto the highly exclusive Court Avenue would, under any other circumstance, cause no comment. The fact that the dashing, cherubic faced, fair-skinned, blond-haired gentleman in question is in fact black puts a whole new twist on things (to say the least). Not only is he the topic of conversation in the genteel home of Miss Agatha Cramp, his spinster neighbour and her cronies, but also at the foremost male watering-hole, Patmore’s. Here the likes of Jinx, Bubber, Shine, Patmore himself and others wonder at the motive of this white Negro—termed ‘dickty’ in Rudolph Fisher’s novel.
In a time when colour is all too often the determining factor of one’s status in life, Merrit and Shine are on opposite sides of the social spectrum. In their separate ways they are both content and fulfilled with their respective lots. Merrit has a sound education behind him and a burgeoning legal career ahead and socializes with like-minded individuals. Whilst Shine, the foreman of a small but highly efficient removal team consisting of his best friends, is equally content. He derives his happiness from driving Bess, his beloved removal van, playing cards and socializing at Patmore’s, and fraternizing with the opposite sex.
Yet, although Shine and Fred are basically both black, the degrees of their colour ensures that socially they are unlikely to meet and in Shine’s eyes Merrit and his like are as much the ‘enemy’ as is white America represented by Miss Cramp—the frail reminder of how America ‘proper’ perceives its black citizens.
Rudolph Fisher uses the biblical Jericho walls as a metaphor for racially divided America, both in a physical sense in terms of location, as well as in social interaction and spiritually. The ‘walls of Jericho’ are what separate the ‘fays’ (white people), ‘dickties’ (people of mixed-race heritage) and ‘boogys’ (ordinary black people)—‘walls’ erected to protect Americans from the ‘pain and stress’ of emotional contact.
The Walls of Jericho then, is not just a story about the Harlem of the twenties. Rudolph Fisher masterfully juxtaposes his characters and themes into a sparklingly witty tragi-comedy, which is as relevant in Britain now as it was in the Harlem Renaissance.
JUSTINA WOKOMA
author of Acts of Inspiration
INTRODUCTION
BELATEDLY, but with increasing and rewarding interest, America is beginning to acknowledge, identify, and re-evaluate its ample stock of cultural assets. Easily one of the most vital movements was the Harlem Renaissance, the period in the 1920s that witnessed explosive bursts of artistic creativity from black America. The genesis of the Renaissance has not yet been fully documented, but, among other things, the period echoed, with certain basic modifications, the frenzied pace of the Roaring Twenties. It attracted, from across the country and from many parts of the world, all kinds of curious and ambitious people, scholars and students, philanthropists and primitivists, but especially black artists—singers, dancers, sculptors, poets, writers—such as Paul Robeson, Bojangles Robinson, Bessie Smith, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes and Alain Locke, the Harvard-trained Ph.D. and Rhodes scholar from Pennsylvania, who, in 1925, was the editor of the important anthology, The New Negro. Prominent white personalities included Salvador Dali, Somerset Maugham, Covarrubias, Clarence Darrow and Carl Van Vechten, whose articles in Vanity Fair and novel, Nigger Heaven (1926), stimulated even more white interest. Many of these artists congregated at fashionable Harlem nightclubs, wild ‘rent parties’, or in ‘The Dark Tower’ of Mrs A’Lelia Walker Robinson, Harlem heiress of the Madame Walker fortunes.
Aware all along that many whites were concerned only with sustaining black stereotypes, community leaders founded their own journals in which their writers would project other aspects of black America. Thus, W.E.B. Du Bois founded and edited The Crisis, the journal of the N.A.A.C.P., while A. Philip Randolph edited The Messenger for political radical action, and Charles S. Johnson edited Opportunity, the organ of the Urban League. But although many were educated at Ivy League universities, the writers were different people, and they chose, to the despair or joy of various editors, different levels of black society. Some chose to present the ‘respectable Negro’, while others, like Rudolph Fisher, chose to depict the Harlem ‘black folk’ character.
Rudolph Fisher was one of those very creative people who live unfortunately brief, fast-paced lives. Born in 1897 in Washington, D.C., he was educated in the public schools of New York and Providence, Rhode Island, where his father was a minister. Fisher was a brilliant student at Brown University, where he switched from a major in English literature to biology, and earned keys to three national honour societies, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Delta Sigma Rho, before he received his B.A. (1919) and M.A. (1920). While accompanying and arranging music for Paul Robeson on concert tours, Fisher took his M.D. from Howard University and in 1924 married Jane Ryder, a Washington school teacher. They moved to New York, where he studied at Columbia, practiced roentgenology, was superintendent of International Hospital, and at the same time, developed a deserved reputation as an outstanding short-story writer. While in pursuit of these several careers, Fisher became ill and was taken from his home in Jamaica, Long Island, to the Edgecombe Sanitorium, where he died in December 1934.
Fisher’s literary output was considerable and widely published. Stories appeared in such publications as The Crisis (‘High Yaller’ in 1925), The Atlantic Monthly (‘City of Refuge’ and ‘Ring Tail’ in 1925, ‘The Promised Land’ and ‘Blades of Steel’ in 1927), Opportunity (‘Guardian of the Law’ in 1933) and Story Magazine (‘Miss Cynthie’ in 1933). There was a piece (‘The Caucasian Storms Harlem’ in 1927) in American Mercury Magazine, professional articles in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, and two novels, The Walls of Jericho (1928) and The Conjure-Man Dies (1932). The latter was produced as a folk play by the Federal Theatre Project’s Negro Unit in 1936.
Always a realistic satirist, Fisher was very much aware of the pseudo-modishness, the cruel hypocrisy of much of the Harlem Renaissance—for instance, the average Harlem resident of the time was not allowed into the fashionable, white-owned and white-attended nightclubs in his own community. Fisher’s fictional themes are varied, but he seems to be most concerned with the outcome of confrontations between big city corrosiveness and newly urbanized ‘rural’ black people. He may have indulged some romantic primitivism in The Conjure-Man Dies, but generally, as in ‘The South Lingers On’, a sensitive five-part sketch, he is sincere in reflecting the folk life around him.
While colour-consciousness destroys a romance in ‘High Yaller’, colour does not seem pivotally important in most of his other short stories. Written on a bet that no one short novel could blend the extremes of Harlem society into a single cohesive story successfully, The Walls of Jericho is an especially comprehensive display of the themes that are common in American black literature and Fisher’s own brilliantly satirical treatment of such themes. Thus, colour (with the lawyer, Merrit), the well-intentioned but hopelessly uncomprehending white philanthropist (Miss Agatha Cramp), the antics of the conveniently paired stock ‘folk’ characters (Jinx and Bubber), the ultimate triumph of the put upon, honest and simple black guy (Shine), the pretensions of the educated avant garde (The Litter Rats) and other literary ploys are all presented here for inspection and enjoyment. Students of American black literature, and the Harlem Renaissance especially, will find the book important for even more reasons.
WILLIAM H. ROBINSON, Jr.
Professor of English
Howard University
This book was first published in New York in 1928 and reflects the society of that time, including racist language that would be considered offensive if used today. It is presented here in full for the sake of historical accuracy.
CHAPTER I
DESPITE the objections of the dickties, who prefer to ignore the existence of so-called rats, it is of interest to consider Henry Patmore’s Pool Parlour on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The truth about Fifth Avenue has only half been told—that it harbours an aristocracy of residence already yielding to an aristocracy of commerce. Has any New Yorker confessed to the rest—that when aristocratic Fifth Avenue crosses One Hundred Tenth Street, leaving Central Park behind, it leaves its aristocracy behind as well? Here are bargain stores, babble, and kids, dinginess, odours, thick speech. Fallen from splendour and doubtless ashamed, the Avenue burrows into the ground and plunges beneath a park which hides it from One Hundred Sixteenth to One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street. Here it emerges moving uncertainly northward a few more blocks; and now—irony of ironies—finds itself in Negro Harlem.
You can see the Avenue change expression from blankness to horror then conviction. You can almost see it wag its head in self-commiseration. Not just because this is Harlem—there are proud streets in Harlem: Seventh Avenue of a Sunday afternoon, Strivers’ Row, and The Hill. Fifth Avenue’s shame lies in having missed these so-called dickty sections, in having poked its head out into the dark kingdom’s backwoods. A city jungle this, if ever there was one, peopled largely by untamed creatures that live and die for the moment only. Accordingly, here strides melodrama, naked and unashamed.
Patmore’s Pool Parlour occupied the remodelled ground floor of a once elegant apartment-house: two long low adjacent rooms, with a smaller one in the rear. You could enter either of the larger two from the street, and a doorway joined them within. There were no pretences about these two rooms: one was a pool room, its green-covered tables extending from front to back in a long squat row, the other was a saloon, with a mahogany bar counter, a great wall mirror, a shining foot rail and brass spittoons. In the saloon you could get any drink you had courage and cash enough to order, in the pool room you could play for any stake and use any language you had the ingenuity to devise. The third room was off the pool room and behind the saloon, this gave itself over to that triad of swift exchange, poker, blackjack, and dice.
Such was Pat’s standing in the community that you might at any time find in this little rear room a policeman sitting in a card game, his coat on the back of his chair, his cap on the back of his head. For men, Pat’s was supremely the neighbourhood’s social centre, where you met real regular guys and rubbed elbows with authority. Henry Patmore was no piker, no sir, not by a damn sight.
In Patmore’s the discussion concerned a possible riot in Harlem, a popular topic among these men who loved battle.
Jinx Jenkins and Bubber Brown led the argument on opposite sides, reinforced by continuous expressions of vague but hearty agreement from their partisans:
‘Tell him ’bout it!’
‘That’s the time, papa!’
‘There now, shake that one off yo’ butt!’
Jinx and Bubber worked at the same job every day, moving furniture. At this they got along tolerably, but after hours they were chronic enemies and were absolutely unable to agree upon anything.
Jinx was thin and elongated, habitually stooped in bearing, lean and sinewy, with freckled skin of a slick deep yellow and a chronically querulous voice.
‘Fays got better sense,’ said he. ‘Never will be no riot no mo’ ’round hyeh.’
Bubber was as different from Jinx as any man could be, short, round and bulging, with a complexion bordering on the invisible.
‘It isn’t due to be ’round hyeh,’ he corrected. ‘It’s way over Court Avenue way. Darkey’s go’n’ move in there tomorrow and fays jes’ ain’t gon’ stand fo’ it.’ Bubber spoke with a loose-lipped lisp, perfected by the absence of upper incisors.
‘Who he?’ Jinx inquired.
‘Some lawyer ’n other named Merrit.’
‘The one got Pat in that mess with d’ gover’ment?’
‘Nobody else,’ said Bubber.
‘Well if he’s a lawyer he sho’ mus’ know what he’s doin’.’
‘Don’ matter what he is,’ argued Bubber. ‘If he move in that neighbourhood, fays’ll start sump’m sho’, and sho’ as they start it, d’ boogies’ll finish it. Won’t make no difference ’bout this Merrit man—he’ll jes’ be d’ excuse— Man, you know that. Every sence d’ war, d’ boogys is had guns and ammunition they stole from d’ army, and they jes’ dyin’ fo’ a chance to try ’em out. I know where they’s two machine guns myself, and they mus’ be a hundred mo’ in Harlem.’
‘Yea,’ said Jinx. ‘I’ve heard ’bout that, too. But I don’t think no shine’s got no business busting into no fay neighbourhood.’
‘He got business busting in any place he want to go. Only way for him to get anywhere is to bust in—ain’t nobody go’n’ invite him in.’
‘Aw, man, what you talkin’ ’bout? He’s a dickty trying his damnedest to be like all the other dickties. When they get in hot water they all come cryin’ to you and me fo’ help.’
‘And they get help, what I mean. Any time dickties start fightin’, d’ rest of us start fightin’ too. Got to. Dickties can’t fight.’
‘Jus’ ’cause they can’t fight ain’t no reason how come we got to fight for him.’
‘’Tain’t nothin’ else. Fays don’t see no difference ’tween dickty shines and any other kind o’ shines. One jig in danger is every jig in danger. They’d lick them and come on down on us. Then we’d have to fight anyhow. What’s use o’ waitin’?’
‘Damned if you’d ever go out o’ yo’ way to fight for no dickties,’ Jinx taunted.
‘Don’t know, I might,’ Bubber said.
‘Huh!’ discredited Jinx. ‘You wouldn’t go out o’ yo’ way to fight for y’ own damn self—and you’re far from a dickty.’
‘Right,’ cheerfully agreed Bubber. ‘I’m far from a dickty, no lie. But I ain’t so far from a rat.’ Jinx missed the meaning of this, so Bubber sidled up close to him and drove it home. ‘Fact I’m right next to one.’
Encircling grins improved Jinx’s understanding. ‘Next to nuthin’!’ he exploded, giving the other a rough push.
‘Next to nuthin’, then,’ acquiesced Bubber, caroming off. ‘You know what you is lots better’n I do.’ Whereupon he did a triumphant little buck and wing step, which ended in a single loud, dust-raising stamp. Dry dust and drier laughter floated irritatingly into Jinx’s face. Jinx was long and limber but his restraint was short and brittle. Derision snapped it in two.
‘So’s yo’ whole damn family nuthin’!’ he glowered, heedless of the disproportion between the trivial provocation and so violent a reaction. For it is the gravest of insults, this so-called ‘slipping in the dozens’. To disparage a man himself is one thing, to disparage his family is another. ‘Slipping’ is a challenge holding all the potentialities of battle. The present example of it brought Bubber up short and promptly withdrew the bystanders’ attention from their gin.
The bystanders began ‘agitatin’’—uttering comments deliberately intended to urge the two into action. The agitators concealed their grins far up their sleeves, presenting countenances grave with apprehension and speaking in tones resigned to the inevitability of battle.
‘Uh-uh! Sho’ mus’ know each other well!’
‘Where I come from, they fights fo’ less than that.’
‘If y’ can’t stand kiddin’, don’t kid, I say.’
‘I don’t believe he’s going hit him, though.’
‘I know what I’d do if anybody said that about my family.’
As a matter of fact, the habitual dissension between these two was the symptom of a deep affection which neither, on question, would have admitted. Neither Jinx and Bubber nor any of their associates had ever heard of Damon and Pythias, and frank regard between two men would have been considered questionable to say the least. Their fellows would neither have understood nor tolerated it; would have killed it by derisions, conjectures, suggestions, comments banishing the association to some realm beyond normal manhood. Accordingly their own expression of this affection had to take an ironic turn. They themselves must deride it first, must hide their mutual inclination in a garment of constant ridicule and contention, the irritation of which rose into their consciousness as hostility. Words and gestures which in a different order of life would have required no suppression became with them necessarily inverted, found issue only by assuming a precisely opposite aspect, concealed a profound attachment by exposing an extravagant enmity. And this was a distortion of behaviour so completely imposed upon them by their traditions and society that even they themselves did not know they were masquerading.
Bubber, his round face gone ominously blank, drew slowly closer to Jinx, who, face thrust forward a little and scowling, stood with his back to the bar counter, on which both elbows rested.
‘Mean—my family?’ inquired Bubber.
Jinx dared not recant. ‘All the way back to the apes,’ he assured him ‘—and that ain’t so awful far back.’
‘The apes in yo’ family is still livin’,’ said Bubber, ‘but there’s go’n’ be one dead in a minute.’
‘Stay where you at, you little black balloon, or I’ll stick a pin in you, you hear?’
By this time Bubber was almost within range and an initial blow was imminent. Absorbed in the impending clash, no one had noticed the arrival of a newcomer. But now this newcomer spoke and his words, soft and low though they were, commanded immediate attention.
‘Winner belongs to me.’
Everybody looked—spectators holding their drinks, Bubber with his blank black face, Jinx with his murderous scowl. They saw a man at one end of the bar counter, one foot raised upon the brass rail, one elbow resting on the mahogany ledge, a young man so tall that, though he bent forward from the hips in a posture of easy nonchalance, he could still see over every intervening head between himself and the two opponents, and yet so broad that his height was not of itself noticeable; a supremely tranquil young Titan, with a face of bronze, hard, metallic, lustrous, profoundly serene. He repeated his remark in paraphrase:
‘I am askin’ fo’ the winner. I am very humbly requestin’ a share in his hind-parts.’
It was apparent that the bristling antagonists bristled no longer, had limply lost interest in their quarrel.
‘Aw, man,’ mumbled Jinx, ‘what you talkin’ ’bout?’
‘You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout you freckle-faced giraffe, and so does that baby hippopotamus in front of you. We got that Court Avenue job in the mornin’, and if I’ve got to break in one rooky on it, I might as well break in two.’ The voice, too, was like bronze, heavy, rich in tone, uncompromisingly solid, with a surface shadowy and smooth as velvet save for an occasional ironic glint.
‘This boogy,’ explained Bubber, ‘thinks he’s bad. Come slippin’ me ’bout my family. He knows I don’t play nuthin’ like that.’
‘Needn’t get uppity ’bout it,’ mumbled Jinx sullenly.
‘Ain’t gettin’ uppity. Jus’ naturally don’t like it, that’s all. Keep yo’ thick lips off my family if y’ know what’s good fo’ you.’
He who had interrupted queried blandly, ‘Ain’t there go’n’ be no fight?’
Jinx said to Bubber, ‘Aw go ahead, drabble-tail. Ain’t nobody studyin’ yo’ family.’
And this questionable apology Bubber chose to accept. ‘Oh,’ said he. ‘Oh—aw right, then. That’s different.’
The atmosphere cleared, attention returned to gin and jest, and Bubber approached the giant, who now was grinning.
‘Certainly am sorry there ain’t go’n’ be no hostilities,’ sighed the latter. ‘Been wantin’ to spank yo’ little black bottom ever since you broke that rope this mornin’.’
‘Aw go ahead, Shine. That boogy’s shoutin’ because you was here to protect him. I’m go’n’ to catch him one these days when you ain’t ’round, and I’m go’n’ turn him every way but loose.’
‘Don’t let him surprise you. He can wrestle the hell out of a piano.’
‘Piano don’t fight back.’
‘Don’t it? Well—neither will you if he gets the same hold on you.’
‘Humph. Who the hell’s scared o’ that freckle-faced giraffe?’
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