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Overview
Originally published in 1972, Gil Scott-Heron’s striking novel The Nigger Factory is a powerful parable of the way in which human beings are conditioned to think, drawing inspiration from Scott-Heron’s own experiences as a student in the late 1960’s and early 70’s.
Earl Thomas, student body president at Sutton University, is in a difficult position: struggling with the fact that even a historically black college could be part of a system that still privileges whites, he’s also threatened by his fellow students, members of radical activist group MJUMBE. Claiming the time has come for revolution, not reform, the leaders of MJUMBE are poised not only to bring Earl down personally, but also to instigate larger scale acts of violence.
An electrifying novel, The Nigger Factory is a penetrating examination of the different forms of resistance and the motivations behind them, and a major document of an era of black thought.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802193919 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/20/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 258 |
| Sales rank: | 1,012,128 |
| File size: | 694 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Seven p.m. Phone Call
Earl Thomas was wiping shaving cream from under his chin when the telephone rang. He waited, thinking that his neighbor Zeke might answer, but when he heard a second shrill jingling he opened the bathroom door and released the receiver from its holster.
'Earl Thomas,' he announced.
'Thomas?' A bass voice boomed. 'This is Ben King. I called cuz I wanned t'tell you 'bout this meetin' we had dis afternoon wit' the studen's.'
'Meetin'? What meetin'?' Earl asked. He was afraid that he already knew the answer to the question.
'MJUMBE had a meetin' wit' the studen's this afternoon 'bout fo' thutty. We had drew up some deman's fo' Head Nigger Calhoun an' we had t'fin' out 'bout hi the people felt 'bout things ... I called you befo' but I got a bizzy signal.'
'Zeke,' Earl muttered.
'What?'
'Nuthin'.'
'Anyway,' King continued, 'I wuz callin' befo' cuz we were gonna like confer wit'choo befo' we handed the shit to the Man, but when I couldn' get'choo we cut out over t'the Plantation,' King laughed. 'Calhoun wudn' home so I called agin.'
'Yeah ...'
'We figgered you might wanna be in-volved,' King added.
The sarcasm that dripped through the receiver as King slowly drawled his way through the monologue was beginning to grate on Earl's nerves. Something very screwy was going on; something that Earl felt an immediate need to pinpoint. But too many ideas were dashing through his head. There was no real way to slow down the thoughts that were turning him into a huge knot. What were the demands? Why hadn't he heard anything from anyone? Faster and faster the questions came, obscuring the words King breathed slowly through the telephone.
'What did you say?' Earl asked. 'I missed that last part.'
'I ast you hi long it's gon' take you to git down here.'
'Down where?'
'Well, we in the frat house on the third flo'.' King said.
'I guess I can be there in 'bout twenny minnits,' Earl calculated.
'Right on!' King laughed. 'We'll be waitin'!'
The call was terminated. Earl felt for the first time the beads of sweat that had been sprung loose from wells at his hairline. Blood was circulating again in his left ear now that the phone had been unclamped. A very sick smile was spread over his face.
There was nothing he really felt capable of doing or saying at that moment. It was sixth grade all over and he was watching his girl being walked home from school by someone else. Everyone in the world was waiting, watching to see what he would do. There was nothing that could be done. Odds had warned him. Lawman had warned him. The pulse of the campus had told him. 'MJUMBE is up to something!' the messages read. But Earl Thomas was not a hasty young man. He had been drawing up a list of demands and researching every item carefully with the Board of Trustees and members of the administration. When he went after Calhoun he was going to be damn sure that everything was perfect. Now the whole thing was shot to hell.
'Where the hell is Victor Johnson?' he asked out loud.
Victor Johnson was the editor-in-chief of the Sutton University Statesman, the campus's weekly newspaper. Earl often referred to Vic as the editor-in-everything because the bespectacled senior seemed to be the only one who ever did any newspaper work on campus. Wasn't a coup newsworthy any more? Wasn't the story of the president of the Student Government Association being shot down worth the print? They printed shit like the ZBZ sorority's news.
Earl slumped heavily on the side of the bathtub. See! See! he heard stumbling through his head. Here you sit inna damn bathrobe splashin' aftershave on yo' mug while some twofaced muthas run 'roun' an' pour freezin' damn water down yo' goddamn back! An' you can' rilly even ac' su'prized cuz evybody tol' you ...
Earl started counting backward. He was trying hard to remember the various dates he had marked on his political calendar; still searching for that one elusive idea that felt so important but could not be captured. Today was October 8th. School had opened on September 9th. He had been elected the previous May and had taken office on June 1st. He had promised the students then that by the end of the coming September he would have a list of their prime grievances drawn up and ready for their approval. It had taken longer than he had thought it would. The old bylaws and old Student Government constitution hampered everything that he wanted to do. He found himself struggling like a man in quicksand; the harder he fought the deeper he sank. It had been as bad as Lawman had predicted: 'It's impossible to move faster within the system than a turtle with two busted legs.'
The truth was that it was his inability to make any headway that was really upsetting Earl about King's call. The message meant that MJUMBE was running head on into Ogden Calhoun, the university president, with nothing to back it up. MJUMBE's act might have been courageous, but it was definitely unwise politically. Calhoun hadn't lasted at Sutton for nine years for no reason. He knew what could and could not be allowed. He had kicked more student reformers out of school than the presidents of any other five schools combined.
Earl switched off the bathroom light and flip-flopped in his shower shoes down the second-floor hall to his room. He strode past the room of Zeke, the handyman, with the record player playing Mongo Santamaria full-blast, and past Old Man Hunt's room, where absolutely nothing was ever going on.
'So the great Sutton revolution has finally begun,' he muttered sarcastically, flinging his door open. 'And Earl Thomas has been kicked the hell out.'
At that point another real question arose. Why had he been called? To hell with why Lawman and Odds, his best friends, had not called. Why had Baker let Ben King call? Earl Thomas and Ralph Baker, the MJUMBE leader, were political enemies. Earl had defeated Baker for the post of SGA president. What was going on?
The chain of events that had wired Earl for the phone call were at that very moment wiring others to the fuse slowly smoldering on the campus of Sutton University. The meeting. Phone call. Busy signal. Calhoun not home. Second call. Earl speaking. A million possible combinations were spiraling across a background of human skin; dominoes that stretched out and were nudged, forced to collapse into one another until a whole line of white dots drilled into black rectangles stumbled jointlessly through a massive collision and lay silent.
Earl pulled his pants on hurriedly. He wasn't sure how much he could do. Maybe nothing. There would be little sense in his asking MJUMBE to halt plans that were off the ground. No one would wait. There would be little point in his explaining to the MJUMBE leadership how much work he had done to get things together. No one would wait. At least he was involved. That was something that would allow him a little say-so. It was much better to be invited in than to have to control the situation from outside. The students would be watching very carefully to see what happened between him and MJUMBE. MJUMBE would doubtlessly be watching to make sure he didn't get away with anything. Everyone would be watching him.
'Ice. Ice. Ice.' He muttered to himself. 'I got to be very cool.'
The train was moving, gaining speed as it left the comparative safety of the yards. The first stop would be a funky frat room on Sutton's campus. Earl knew that if he wasn't cool the train might go no further. He wondered if he could take it. Baker and King laying down the rules. Earl Thomas caught in the middle. He definitely did not dig the plot. But he realized that he had no real choice. He was not the train's engineer. He was a passenger.
CHAPTER 2MJUMBE
Mjumbe is the Swahili word meaning messenger. On the campus of Sutton University, Sutton, Virginia, it was also the identifying name for the Members of Justice United for Meaningful Black Education. MJUMBE.
The name was chosen by Ralph Baker, a six-foot two-hundred-pound football player who had organized the group and served as its spokesman. Baker sat in the third-floor meeting room of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity house waiting for the results of Ben King's phone call to Earl Thomas. He was also reliving the day.
The day had really started for Baker at four o'clock that afternoon. He had left a note in the frat house lounge after breakfast notifying the four other MJUMBE chieftains of a four o'clock meeting. When he came into the lounge at four the others were waiting.
'Brothers,' he had said, 'the time has come.'
'Right on!' Ben King had said, sitting up.
Baker placed a stack of one thousand mimeographed sheets on the battered card table. Each man took one.
'We been layin' an' bullshittin' too long,' Baker commented as the men read the paper.
'Fo' hundred years,' Speedy Cotton mumbled.
'Thomas said when he was elected that by the enda September he wuz gonna have everything laid out like a train set ... I don' need ta tell nobody that iz October eighth an' we ain' heard from the nigger yet. He ain' nowhere near organized an' ...'
'He a damn Tom!' King said. 'I tol' yawl he wuz a Tom!'
The members of MJUMBE all nodded. Baker glared down at them as though they were to blame. Ben King and Speedy Cotton sat on the same side of the table as usual, a set of diagrammed football formations in front of them. Fred Jones, Jonesy, tapped a deck of cards on the side of the table. Abul Menka, the only MJUMBE member who was not a football player, sat in the corner of the room with his feet propped on the window ledge.
'So na',' Baker went on, 'it's pretty clear t'me that if anything gon' get done, we gon' do it!'
'Right on!'
'I wanna know what yawl think 'bout the stuff,' Baker said gesturing to the paper. 'We gotta have it t'gether 'cuz we gon' be meetin' wit' ev'y man, woman, an' chile on this campus in 'bout fifteen minnits.'
'That wuz the meetin' we heard bein' announced?' Speedy Cotton asked.
'That wuz it!'
'Then this las' deman' means Calhoun gon' get these deman's t'night?'
Baker smiled. 'I think you catchin' on.' Baker, King, and Cotton shared a loud laugh.
'What 'bout practice?' Jonesy interrupted. 'We s'pose t'be at practice at fo' thutty.'
'No practice today.' King snorted. 'We gon' be bizzy.' He laughed.
'Why today?' Jonesy asked. All four men knew that Jonesy was the worrier. He was never comfortable until he was on a football field where all he had to do was knock hell out of anything that moved.
Baker ran a big black hand over his bald-shaved head. 'I figger we got a surprize fo' Calhoun. He been in Norfolk for two days an' he ain' gittin' back 'til 'bout six t'night. By then we be done had our meetin', ate, come back an' wrapped everything tight ...'
'What 'bout Thomas?' King asked.
Baker frowned. 'I'm gittin' to that ... if Thomas ain' at the meetin', an' he may not be ...'
'Why wouldn' he be there?'
'Look. Lemme say the shit. All right? ... Thomas ain' got no classes on Wednesday so he don' be here. All right? So if Thomas ain' at the meetin', after we come back an' git our shit right, we gon' call 'im an' tell 'im to come over here an' do somethin' fo' us.'
'We gon' blow his min' this time,' Cotton laughed.
'Him an' Head Nigger if shit work out.' Baker laughed louder.
'We gon' have him take Head Nigger this list?' King asked waving the demands.
'I wanned to s'prize Thomas.'
'It'll s'prize a lotta folks,' Cotton remarked.
King, Baker, and Cotton enjoyed another good laugh. Jonesy simply frowned and Abul Menka, as usual, did nothing.
'What if Thomas don' dig bein' out the driver's seat?' Cotton asked, getting serious.
'Either secon' or nothin',' Baker said setting his jaw. 'From now on we runnin' shit!'
Baker continued to go over the afternoon in his mind. The four o'clock prompting for the MJUMBE team had set the stage for the four-thirty rally with the students. The five of MJUMBE had left the meeting room together. They had strode across the Sutton Oval that was set in the middle of the campus to the Student Union Building. They crushed the dead grass beneath their feet and quickly scaled the thirteen steps that led to a balcony overlooking the crowd of students that had already begun to gather. All five were dressed in black dashikis. All except Abul Menka were heavily muscled athletes who had shaved their heads when the coach complained about bushy heads not allowing helmets to fit tightly enough. All five were intent and stern-faced, silhouetted by a fading red disc that had darkened their bodies during an early-autumn heat wave. All bad. All Black.
The student response to Baker's demands had been greater than even he expected. He had thought there might be some question as to his authority. Nobody had even mentioned Earl Thomas. The students seemed very unconcerned as to who actually became the leader for the change the campus needed so badly. All they wanted was action.
Baker had been in his world. He bathed in the light of the handclapping, whistling, and shouted support heaped upon him and his comrades. It seemed that with the reading of each demand the support grew. He had said everything he could think of about Ogden Calhoun, the Head Nigger, and the members of the administration. When he finished, the five men marched through the crowd that still stood chattering like monkeys. All Baker could hear was:
'Do it, Brother!' and 'Right on with power!'
There was little they could do now but wait. Wait and think. Baker knew that the support had been good, but he also knew that Ogden Calhoun had a reputation as a destroyer of student dissent. The Sutton president had been asked recently how Sutton had escaped the student disruptions that had rocked other Black campuses. Calhoun had replied to the interviewer: 'I have a saying for students on my campus. It says: "My way or the highway!" In other words: "If we can' git along, you goin' home!"'
So the lines were drawn. Calhoun had no room in his plans for student disruption. MJUMBE had no plans for going home.
Baker's mind drifted. After the afternoon meeting his plan had started to become shaky. Just at the point when his name was on the lips of every Sutton student, he was knifing himself in the back by having Earl Thomas notified. He hated to think of turning the least credit over to a man he considered an enemy, but there was really no way out of it. While running for Student Government president he had preached Black collectivity; all political factions putting their heads together. And there was no denying that Earl Thomas was a smart politician. The election had proven that. Then too, if Earl endorsed Baker, another bloc of students would fall easily into line.
In late August when Jonesy had arrived for summer football training Baker had started talk about MJUMBE. 'If you ain' out fo' nuthin' but revenge on Thomas fo' beatin' you,' Jonesy had said, 'forget it.'
'I ain' lookin' fo' nothin' but progress,' Baker had sworn. 'I think MJUMBE can serve a two-way purpose. First, Thomas gon' move if he know somebody lookin' over his shoulder. Second, all the athletes would be down to back Thomas up if we wuz organized an' spoke fo' him.'
The possibility that MJUMBE might give Earl its backing was what had sold Jonesy. And now that the time had come Jonesy had not objected to any of Baker's arguments about why MJUMBE should cast the first stone. But Baker knew well enough that Jonesy would pull out if he felt as though the group spokesman had lied about his intentions. Earl had been called.
That's when things started fuckin' up, Baker thought.
Earl's line had been busy. Baker decided on a second's notice that since Earl couldn't be reached MJUMBE would deliver its own mail.
'It's six thutty,' he said when King notified him of the busy line. 'Calhoun was s'pose to git home 'bout six. He prob'bly got wind a the deman's already. We can' give 'im too much time to pull no fas' stuff on us.'
They had started out. Five men in black dashikis crunching through the dead leaves across the quadrangle behind the fraternity house, across the football field to the big white house Sutton students called 'the Plantation.' Calhoun wasn't home.
Calhoun's absence implied several things to Baker. It indicated that Calhoun knew nothing of the demands. God knew he would have been setting up some counterattack had he heard. It also meant that MJUMBE might have peaked too soon.
As a football player Baker knew a lot about peaking. A team is built up by a good coach to reach its emotional and competitive peak just before the charge down the shadowed runway; when the only sound to be heard is the thunderous clacking of forty pairs of cleats grating against the rough-grained concrete. The team tears down the ramp ready to tackle a moving van. Every inch of your body would be choking with the smell of forty men, practice jerseys, wintergreen, urine, and the sweaty jocks that lay in a corner hamper. Your heart strait-jacketed in your chest, climbing up bony columns of your throat, tightening you into a gigantic ball.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Nigger Factory"
by .
Copyright © 1972 Gil Scott-Heron.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1 Seven p.m. Phone Call,
2 MJUMBE,
3 Earl,
4 Lawman and Odds,
5 Confrontation,
6 The Plan,
7 O'Jay's,
8 The Head Nigger,
9 Wheels in Motion,
10 Angie,
11 Calhoun's Assessment,
12 Preparation,
13 Evaluation,
14 Ten O'clock Meeting,
15 Captain Cool,
16 Executive Conference,
17 High Noon,
18 MJUMBE Mandate,
19 A Three-pronged Spear,
20 Self-help Programs,
21 Reactor,
22 Counterthreat,
23 Choosing Sides,
24 On the Spot,
25 Calhoun Moves,
26 Lying in Wait,
27 The House on Pine Street,
28 Destruction,
29 Plans Abandoned,
30 Final Word,
31 Faculty Only,
32 Exodus,
33 Explosion!,
34 MJUMBE Discovery,
35 Downhill Snowball,
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