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LE ROI JONES AND NEW WRITERS JACKSON In the last essay in Home, "A Legacy to Malcolm X," the reader realizes that Jones has abandoned all hopes of attempting to live with white people in an emancipated America. Rather, he quotes Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Black Muslims, in noting the necessity of Black men to disenfranchise themselves from the country, and seek their own land in which to start to live as free men with free control over the destinies of their existences: We want our people in America, whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own - either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slavemasters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich.21 Jones believes that the only manner in which a Black man can prove his nationalism is by talking about land - a Black land - a land of his own. As a preliminary step to acquiring his own land, Jones writes of the necessity to nationalize all of the business in such Black ghettos as Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. And to then draw up his own treaties, agreements and laws for forming an autonomous nation. Finally, with a word to the Black artists in America, Jones tells them that their primary function is to aid in the destruction of America. The role of the Black artist, according to LeRoi Jones, "is to report and reflect precisely the nature of the society, and of himself in the society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering and, if they are Black men, grow strong enough through this moving, having seen their own strength and weakness; and if they are white men, tremble, curse and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil"22 It is difficult for me to properly assess the development of Jones' thinking as recorded in Home. Perhaps, one should first examine the phenomenon of existential Negro, as portrayed by Calvin Hernton and try to put Jones in the picture. LeRoi Jones as the alienated man within a white society, a violent society: The violence in the culture of America against black people forces the Negro into what psychiatrists Gregory Bateson and R.D. Laing call the "double bind." The culture seeks to do harm to the Negro - if the Negro refuses to submit, he is cast into the role of the criminal (as Wright's "Bigger"). The black man is 239
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 11:22:21