Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

penniless writer, he travels the
gamut from beans and ham hocks
to plush meals in Europe . He leaves
the Negro paper for a more profitable
position on a "liberal" white
one . His published novels become
a measured success, so successful
that one eventually goes into paperback
. He joins the White House
staff as a speech writer for a "Kennedy-type"
President, and leaves
unhappily because the President
doesn't use any of his speeches . He
emasculates his manhood through
his relationships with black and
white women and soon becomes a
carbon-copy of that white boy .
Lillian Patch, who is killed because
of an abortion, was, of
course, the prototype of the "Negro"
professional woman, one who
had acquired all the white "values"
of her society and who wished to
live those "values ." Lillian and
Max would have gotten married
had Max had a better paying job,
and had he moved more swiftly into
the American "mainstream ." Max
made the mistake of letting Lillian
wear the pants, and in effect lost
himself and Lillian .
After a short depression period
brought on by the death of Lillian,
Max is regenerated through a job
with the New York Century-a
liberal white paper-and the publication
of his third novel . After a
successful stay at the Century, Max
leaves and joins Pace (a Time-style
NEGRO DIGEST 'March f968
(Continued from pn e 52)
magazine) and works his way up
to chief of its African bureau .
The scene of the novel shifts
from the United States to Africa
and Europe . While in Africa we
learn such things as the truth about
the African slave trade, that black
Africans own a very small percentage
of their land, that the black
masses of South Africa, with its
own system of apartheid, have a
higher standard of living than the
masses of Africans in other areas
of the continent . We learn that the
majority of black leaders in the
"independent" nations of Africa
are just as devious, selfish and pro-
Western as the black middle-class
in the United States .
In Europe, we have glimpses of
Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
and the whole French-black intellectual
association . As in the Europe
of Hemingway, Pound, Eliot,
Joyce and Fitzgerald, black writers
are not wanted or needed . Finally,
while we are in Europe, we come
to the revolutionary discovery of
the "King Alfred Contingency
Plan" for the detention and systematic
extermination of the Afro-
American people . While attending
the funeral of Harry Ames, Max is
given this highly secret information
by Harry's white mistress .
As Max reads the letter from
Harry explaining the plan, his physical
pain (cancer of the rectum)
leaves him and is replaced with the
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