Black Boy: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

Richard becomes disillusioned with aspects of the John Reed Club and the Communist Party. At a meeting of his “unit,” a subsection of the Party, he is laughed at by other black Communists, who believe he is too “bourgeois” and too educated to be a trustworthy member of the Party. Later, Richard has an idea: he plans to write “biographical sketches” of Communist Party members, both to try out a new kind of narrative and to showcase the social backgrounds of its rank-and-file. He begins by interviewing a man named Ross, who has been charged by Chicago police “with ‘inciting a riot.’”

After meeting with Ross several times and learning the story of his life, Richard runs into an unnamed black Communist in the streets of the South Side, a member of the Party outranking Richard. The man implies that Richard is acting seditiously toward the party, like Trotsky, who opposed Stalin in the USSR. Wright remarks to the reader that at this time he’d read no Trotsky, and was instead a reader of Stalin’s work. Richard thus finds the man’s accusations laughable. Richard is taken with Stalin’s idea that the ethnic “minorities” of the USSR might be joined into a social “unity.” He wonders, too, if this is possible in America.

Another Party official, Ed Green, visits Ross, Ross’s wife, and Richard at Ross’s apartment one day. Although he says nothing about it outright, Richard realizes that Green, like the previous, unnamed man, is trying to dissuade Richard from his biographical sketches. Ross, for his part, doesn’t worry too much about Green’s involvement. After this surprise meeting, they continue their interviews together, but Richard feels that Ross is less expansive in his comments, shaken by the Party’s implicit control of his speech.

Richard changes his idea from a set of biographical sketches to a collection of short stories. He derives his information from Ross and others in his social circle, and finishes a story that’s published in an anthology of black writing. Richard writes a few more, using information from his and his comrades’ lives, but he feels they don’t “catch the quality of the experience” he’s seeking. Around this time, he also begins working at the South Side Boys’ Club, arranging activities for young men in the area and noting down their habits and social interactions.

Richard becomes more deeply disillusioned with the John Reed Club and the Communist Party in Chicago. After a series of discussions at the local and national level, the Party diminishes the influence of local John Reed chapters. It announces that properly Communist writing should be in the form of informational pamphlets, not creative fictions. Richard believes these decisions are not in the best interests of worker unity, but he cannot convince the Party brass of his ideas. He realizes that some Communists, like many Southern whites, want to suppress his ability to speak his mind.

In 1935, Richard travels to New York for a conference of national John Reed Clubs and Communist Party locals. Quickly, Richard becomes upset with the conference’s lack of support for Reed Clubs, and for creative expression more generally. He has difficulty finding a place to stay in the city, and on the last meeting day, all national Reed Club chapters are officially disbanded by the Party. Richard returns home, dejected, and believes his career as a Communist intellectual is largely finished.

Richard is surprised to be met at his apartment soon after by Ed Green, a Party higher-up. Green tells Richard that Buddy Nealson, an influential black Communist in Chicago, wants to meet with him. Richard agrees, and Nealson tries to encourage Richard to stay with the Party, and to accept a new committee assignment. Richard, however, says he needs time to focus on his writing. Nealson and others in the Chicago Communist Party try to convince Richard to stay, but at this point, the breach between the writer and organization is too vast. Richard gives a speech at a unit meeting, offering his resignation. He pointedly says he denounces no Communist principles, only the administration of the group. He believes this will allow him to leave the Party freely, and without fear of recrimination.

Soon after, two men from the Party come to Richard’s apartment and accuse him of being a Trotskyite traitor. Richard is aghast at these accusations, which are untrue. He also realizes he was naive to think he could leave the Party so easily. He tells the men that, if Nealson continues slandering him, he will defend himself. No further action is taken by the Party. Richard remarks to the reader that he was too much of an individualist for Communist organizing, even though its ideas are important to him.

The relief office transfers Richard from the South Side Boys’ Club, where he’s been working, to the Federal Negro Theater. Richard becomes the head of PR for the group. He is upset, however, to learn that the theater produces mostly “Africanized” versions of repertory drama—which hew mostly to stereotypes of black life. He encourages the theater to find a new leader, a man named DeSheim, whose passion for black realist drama Richard shares.

Richard is saddened to learn, though, that the black members of the company don’t like the work DeSheim champions. They call for DeSheim’s removal. When they learn that Richard supports DeSheim, they label him an “Uncle Tom,” and threaten violence against him. Richard calls the relief office and asks to be transferred. He is sent to a white-led experimental theater, and he wonders at the mindset of those in the Federal Negro Theater, who were convinced he was not sympathetic to them.

Soon after, Richard is called to a meeting by former comrades in the Communist Party. They tell him that Ross, whom Richard interviewed, is being tried for crimes against the Party. Richard fears that he, too, will be charged, but his comrades say he’s only to be there as a witness to the proceedings. The trial is long, and involves lectures on international Communism and its values. Richard finds himself with deeply mixed feelings about the Party: its dream of universal brotherhood, and its reality of petty in-fighting and intrigue.

At the end of the trial, Ross is accused of seditious acts by his own close comrades. Richard is shocked at this development. He is even more shocked when Ross confesses entirely, begging to be readmitted to the Party. Richard believes this event to be both “horrible” and full of “glory.” It is horrible because one man’s spirit has been broken by a more powerful group. But it is glorious, because that man is recommitting himself to a global struggle for equality. Richard is allowed to leave the meeting unharmed. He is less sure than ever about his views of the Party, and whether it is a force for good or ill.