Say"Richard Wright" to most students and they'll answer, Native Son. Most readers have never heard of or read Wright's short stories, which is unfortunate. One of Wright's most powerful stories is "Long Black Song," which he wrote in 1938, a few years before publishing Native Son. The story begins on a hot, summer evening with Sarah tending to her daughter, Ruth, and missing her husband, Silas, who has been gone for nearly a week. An African-American farmer, Silas has gone to market to sell the cotton he's harvested and to bring home the family's money for the year. As Sarah waits for his return, she's interrupted by a White salesman who tries to sell her a clock and a graphophone. Assured that Sarah's husband is out of town, the salesman asks for a drink of well water, and in the darkness his hands travel to places that they don't belong. Sarah protests, but they end up in bed. Shortly thereafter, the salesman leaves but says he will return the next day to speak to Silas and be paid for the now discounted clock and graphophone. Silas returns that night and after discovering evidence of his wife's infidelity, he throws out the items and threatens to whip Sarah who promptly runs away to an adjacent field. The next morning, the salesman returns with a friend; Silas becomes so incensed that he hits and kills one of the white men. The other man drives away. Sarah returns home and Silas reflects upon his life and his actions. He knows that if he stays, he will be killed but if he leaves, he will leave behind his home and farm to be a fugitive forever. He chooses to stay and fight, but he sends Sarah and the baby away. Naturally, the white man returns with an angry posse who demand that Silas come out and take his punishment. Silas answers with gunfire and the mob shoots back before setting the house afire with Silas trapped inside.
On the face of it, the story seems a fairly straightforward tale of anger, infidelity, and retribution. However, it's really much more complex. It's the story of a Black man seeking the American dream and realizing that he has never had a chance in h-e-double-hockeysticks of getting it. So, what is the American Dream? People from all over the world know it and seek it. It is the belief that in America, a person can start with absolutely nothing, but if s/he works hard and follows the rules, that person can gain financial security and the good life: a house with a White picket fence, a spouse and children, a nice car, and maybe a dog. But perhaps there's a reason we call it a dream--because for so many people, it will never come true.
At first, Silas believed he could achieve this dream. As a man in the South in the 1930s, he believed in the importance of a patriarchal society, which was the foundation of the American Dream. Under a system of patriarchy, men and women had distinct roles. Women cared for the home and family. They were considered delicate creatures who should be domestic, pious, faithful, and submissive. Men, on the other hand, should be providers, protectors, and heads of the household. Together, if a husband and wife each worked hard in his or her roles, they could achieve the American Dream. For ten years, Silas tried to hold up his end of the bargain. He worked hard on his farm. And each year, he used a little of his earnings to buy more land so he could make even more money. He even built a home for his family, and delighted in bringing Sarah special gifts. Provider.....check! Though he hated Whites, he primarily stayed out of their way and observed the unspoken rules of the Jim Crow South. He even tried to imitate White behavior by hiring help to work the farm, "the way the white folks do." Rule follower....check! And based on his violent reaction to the White salesman who disrespected his home, his wife, and their marriage, Silas tried to be a protector, as well. In short, Silas did everything he was supposed to do and yet he still ended up dying, alone, in the house that was supposed to have been the first installment of his American Dream.
Some readers would say that Silas sabotaged his chances of achieving the American Dream when he killed the salesman. That's true, but like the baby's symbolic name, it's only partially the truth. Whether he had killed the salesman or not, whether he provided for his family or not, Silas never had a chance of achieving that dream because the American Dream in the 1930s was really meant for men, and no Black man could be a man in the South during that time. He could not protect his wife; no Black man ever could. During slavery, a male slave could only marry a female slave if he got the owner's permission and even then, the marriage was not legal because slaves were property, like lamps or cows. Worse, no slave could protect his woman from being beaten or sexually abused. Frederick Douglass tells the story of having to sit idly and helplessly by while his Aunt Hester was stripped naked, tied down, and beaten until her blood ran across the kitchen floor. Other female slaves were sexually abused. Regardless of whether she was "married" or in love, regardless of her age, if the overseer or master wanted his female slave to have sex with him--or with any other slave--she was compelled to do so, and no man could protect her from it. (Just ask Harriet Jacobs; her master began pursuing her doggedly when she was only 15 years old. So desperate to escape his sexual advances was she that she hid in her grandmother's attic for seven years! Though slavery ended in 1865, its ghosts certainly hovered in the 1930s. The sexual exploitation of Black women in America had been a long song, one which Silas probably knew well. This history might have been what Silas was thinking of as he tried to imagine his wife, alone at the homestead, and seduced or raped by a smooth talking salesman.
That seduction emphasized to Silas that Black women were nothing, and neither were Black men. While White women were put on pedestals and treated with respect, Black women were often treated like prostitutes. After having his way with Sarah, the salesman announces, "You can have [the graphophone] for forty instead of fifty." It's unlikely a White woman would have been treated this way. Indeed, Silas tells the story of a Black soldier beaten for supposedly "sassing" a White woman--because White women were too good and too delicate to even be spoken to harshly (or at all) by Black men. Emmett Till and so many others learned the fatal way that even an improper look could land a Black man at the bottom of a river or burned and dangling from a tree branch. Yet, this White salesman thought, in spite of the fact that she was married, that it was perfectly fine for him to grope Sarah and then follow her into her bedroom and have sex with her. Worse, he had the audacity to believe that he could drive up to Silas' home the next morning and ask for a ten dollar deposit on the clock without any fear that Silas would harm him. And why wouldn't he believe that? Black men had no authority to protect their Black daughters, sisters, or wives against the advances of a White man.
And maybe I should be using the present tense...not had, but have. We still see examples of Black male impotence in contemporary literature! Remember the scene in the movie Crash where two White police officers stop an affluent Black couple. During the stop, one officer molests the Black woman while her husband (played by Terrence Howard) looks on silently and helplessly. It's a police officer, after all. Frightened and confused, his wife looks over for his protection and intervention. Knowing that this police officer could kill him and rape his wife anyway, the husband says in desperation, "Just do what he says" and another American Dream is shattered. If society says that a man must provide for and protect his family, but this man can't protect his wife from a policeman's sexual advances, then is he a man? No. And if he isn't a man, how can he achieve the American Dream? He can't.
See the Crash movie trailer here:
So, if a wealthy man in the 21st century could not stop his wife from being sexually assaulted, what chance did poor Silas, an uneducated farmer, have? None. What choices did he have? None. All his life, Silas had told himself that "'Ef youhs gonna git anywheres, youh gotta do just like they [White people] do.'" Standing in his bedroom looking at a White man's handkerchief in his bed and then later standing over that man's dead body, Silas finally realized the bitter truth, that no matter how well he provided for his family, he could never "do just like the White people do." He could not do the most important thing of all. He could not protect his wife, as a White man protects his. So, Silas had two choices. Choice 1: he could follow the Terrence Howard path and allow this man to have sex with his wife without consequences. Or, choice 2: he could defend his wife's honor, as a White husband would. He could let the world know that his wife was worthy of the same respect as any White woman. If he chose the first option, he would never be a man in the fullest sense of the word. He would be shamed and emasculated, but he would live. If he chose the second option, he would be a man but only for as long as it took the White men to kill him--because no Black man could live in the 1930s in the South. For Silas, the choice was as obvious as the "bangbangbang" throughout the story. On a literal level, the "bangbangbang" represented the baby beating the broken clock like a drum. But on a symbolic level, it represented the ways in which Black men are beaten down, repeatedly and constantly. It symbolized the sound a gun makes, foreshadowing Silas' act of murder. And sadly, the fact that the baby creates the sound symbolizes that this bitter truth; this long, black song will continue to play well into the next generation.
Chances are that if this act of adultery had not happened, Silas might have lived his entire life thinking it was possible for him to be a Black man in America, thinking it was possible for him to live the American Dream. It took infidelity and a price tag marked down ten dollars for Silas to realize that he lived in a world where Black men and women could be treated like objects to be used or bought and sold, to learn that it was impossible for a Black man to do what a White man could. Thus, what had amounted to essentially a business transaction for the salesman was a life-altering and life-ending lesson for Silas.
