Harlem Nocturne (14 page)

Ann Petry was a prolific writer of short stories, and it was within that genre that she first sought to make her name. She began writing in the midst of an explosion of black short fiction. Black authors often chose to write short stories in the 1930s and the 1940s in an effort to target black audiences, since they believed that short stories appealed to black working-class readers with little time for reading full-length novels.
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It was still the golden age of the short story in the mainstream press, with top magazines like the
Saturday Evening Post
paying top dollar for pieces by the luminaries of the day. In the black press, short stories were published in “little magazines.” Like the more radical newspapers of the black press, little magazines helped to create a critical, even oppositional sensibility. A number of Petry's short stories appeared in these publications. And, like her contemporaries, Petry used the form to give voice to ordinary working people. A brief inventory of Petry's short fiction reveals three that were inspired by newspaper stories. Three are integrationist race-relation stories set in New England. Three are Harlem implosion stories where racial frustrations lead to violence turned inward, and one is a jazz story.
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When Houghton Mifflin discovered Petry and encouraged her to write a novel in 1943, she applied for the publishing house's literary fellowship. Houghton Mifflin granted her $2,400 in 1945. With this money and the $50 monthly stipend she received from her husband's allotment check, Petry quit her various jobs in order to devote her full attention to writing. George's absence gave her the time and space she needed to acquire training and to write, and his financial support helped to subsidize her efforts. She later recalled, “I began my first novel, writing every day from 9:00 a.m. to noon, and then stopping for an hour for lunch and writing from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 or 3:00
P.M.
every day.” Some days an idea or an image would appear as she rode the subway. According to her daughter, “[Petry] said it might have been the jolting of the subway cars on the long ride but the information seemed to ‘pop into my head.'”
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Once she was home, a passage would unfurl from that simple image or idea. Petry's husband sometimes teased her that late-night subway trips always resulted in “some drunk” pouring out his life story to her.

Petry wrote the first chapter of
The Street
directly on the typewriter without revising anything. The rest of the book went through several drafts. As Petry later recalled: “I went over . . . the rest of it over and over and over again, simplifying it, testing the dialogue, the descriptions of people and places. I put all of my feelings, my sense of outrage into the book. I tried to include the sounds and the smells and sights of Harlem. I wanted a book that was like an explosion inside the head of the reader, a book that you couldn't put down once you'd started reading it. I tried to create a vivid sense of balance.”
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The result
was a novel unlike any other in American literary history. From the very first page, Lutie Johnson, the novel's protagonist, is under assault by the natural and built environment, by white and black individuals, and by economic and political systems that have been historically built upon the exploitation and domination of people like Lutie.

Lutie is a Harlem resident who walks the same streets Petry walked, though she tends to spend more time below 125th than above. She is an ambitious single mother and domestic servant trying to move up in the ranks of civil servants. She believes in the American Dream and is certain that economic success and security await her if only she works hard enough. Lutie has chosen Benjamin Franklin as an intellectual ancestor and mentor, and as she walks the streets of Harlem, she contemplates the guidance Franklin offers in his
Autobiography
. Much of the novel documents her growing awareness that the ideas and ideals posited by Franklin and other Founding Fathers not only did not include her, but were based upon a foundation that depended upon her enslavement. It's no coincidence that one of the figures who helps to bring about Lutie's demise is named Junto, a name inspired by a mutual improvement society founded by Franklin in 1731. The Junto's membership was limited to white males, who not only helped to educate one another, but also helped each other gain financial independence. By engaging Franklin's
Autobiography
, Petry was asserting that Lutie's difficulties were not caused by a lack of work ethic, personal responsibility, or ambition; instead, it was white supremacy that had prevented women like Lutie from achieving the American Dream.

As Lutie—and Petry herself—realized, the fraught relationship between race, class, gender, and the founding principles of American democracy played out daily in the small, seemingly insignificant challenges of life in Harlem. For instance, Lutie is a consumer who is fully aware of the issues that Petry outlined in her call for Negro Women Incorporated—such as lack of access to adequate food and housing—but no such organization appears in the story. Petry put her own personal observations into Lutie's experience of Harlem. Lutie walks Eighth Avenue as Petry herself walked it, taking in the small stores along the way. Lutie notes, “All of them—the butcher shops, the notion stores, the vegetable stands—all of them sold the leavings, the sweepings, the impossible unsalable merchandise, the dregs and dross that were reserved especially for Harlem.”
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Harlem residents were forced to consume cheap goods, and as such they were also treated as if they were “the dregs and dross” of society. Finally, not only were they encouraged to buy this merchandise, but they were also encouraged to sell themselves cheaply as laborers and as sex objects.

Although Lutie first has the personal experience and then later the critical awareness of the larger overarching structures that limit her choices in consumer goods, housing, job opportunities for herself, and educational opportunities for her son, she does not have the opportunity to channel either that experience or that consciousness into organized political activity. She is too preoccupied with survival: an extra job, studying for a civil service exam, taking care of her child. Eventually she will think her talent for singing might be a way out. Singing is portrayed as an option for black women outside of prostitution
and domestic service, and yet containing remnants of both—a form of serving white audiences by entertaining them and putting one's sexuality on display.

Lutie's concern with survival keeps her from meetings like those of the Harlem Riverside Defense Council or Negro Women Incorporated, if she is even aware of their existence. Petry allowed her character a limited experience of Harlem, certainly one that was far narrower than her own. Lutie walks a very circumscribed map of central Harlem confined by 116th and 125th. She never visits Sugar Hill or Strivers Row. She sees the cheap stores on Eighth Avenue, but she does not visit the open-air market that Petry would later describe in an article about Harlem. She never encounters an activist preacher like Adam Clayton Powell Jr., or people like Dollie Robinson, Louise Thompson, Esther Cooper, and Ella Baker.

Petry refused to portray these failures as an indictment of Lutie and her nonfiction sisters, but instead pointed out a basic reality: the most committed organizations and individuals were not always available to the people who needed them most. And the forces that both confronted were ultimately far more powerful than the efforts of individuals or organizations. Petry's commitment to realism insisted upon a portrayal of Harlem life as it was experienced by most of its residents, not just well-known artists and members of the black elite. She was the sensitive activist, the ever-aware artist who was concerned with the people who may not have been touched by her activism or her art. Petry realized that for characters like Lutie, there was no way out. Lutie's circumstances demanded a fundamental change in the economic and political structure.

Petry portrayed Lutie's failures as the result of all the formations set up against her, those put into place without consideration for her well-being by people who could imagine her as nothing more than chattel. The contemporary society she inhabits is one that has inherited the very worst of the principles advanced by the Founding Fathers. Though formal slavery is over, Lutie is still viewed as a commodity for sale. She is the fictional sister of the large number of black women who, between 1940 and 1944, left domestic service and took advantage of the opportunity to pursue work as low-level civil servants or war industry workers. The number of black women employed as domestic servants decreased from 60 percent to 44 percent during this period as more varied jobs opened up for women in the war industry. Nonetheless, those who found work within the war industry were most often given custodial positions that mirrored domestic labor.
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Although
The Street
is primarily concerned with a single mother, black men are never far away. Petry, ever cognizant of George's experience in the military, gave voice to black men's frustration, especially during wartime. Boots Smith, Petry's fictional character, is not George Petry. A bandleader and Lutie's potential love interest, he lives outside the mainstream, refusing to participate in a straight and narrow life. Boots has worked as a Pullman Car porter, a highly coveted and politicized profession for black men, but chooses the life of a musician because of its relative freedom compared to other options available to black men. Like real-life figures such as Malcolm X and Dizzy Gillespie, Boots does not join the military. When asked if he wants to go to war, Boots responds, “Why should I?” He goes
on to explain, “They hate Germans, but they hate me worse. If that wasn't so they wouldn't have a separate army for black men. . . . Sending a black army to Europe to fight Germans. Mostly with brooms and shovels.” George Petry's experiences confirmed this view of what it meant to be a black soldier. He later asserted that German POWs were treated better than black soldiers. Nazi prisoners of war who were held on US military bases were allowed to dine with white soldiers in racially segregated mess halls. When Lena Horne performed at a southern camp, the audience was segregated and black soldiers were seated behind German POWs. Horne stepped offstage, walked down the aisle past the whites, and sang directly to the black men in her audience.

Boots gives voice to Petry's disdain for the segregated military. While her new husband enlisted, served in a Jim Crow military, and suffered the daily humiliations that most black servicemen faced, Petry imagined a character, an outlaw figure, who dared to avoid the draft. But Petry acknowledged, even in her fiction, the diverse range of political thought among black Americans. Lutie uncritically believes in the American Dream and all of the national myths that accompany it. Boots, meanwhile, possesses a level of cynicism that makes it impossible for him to believe that the country is worth fighting for.
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While many young black men in real life may have felt the same way Boots, Gillespie, and Malcolm X did about the US military, most, like George, went on to serve in the military and displayed great loyalty while doing so. David Dinkins, mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993; heavyweight boxing champion
Joe Louis; and writer Albert Murray are but a few of the well-known African Americans who served with distinction. But there were just as many unknown and unnamed who would never fully get over the trauma of attending boot camp under the direction of racist officers or the treatment they received at home and abroad at the hands of bigots. These types of young men would appear in Petry's fiction—and the difficulties they faced would preoccupy most of black America throughout the war years. National civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League joined the black press in an organized campaign against racial segregation in the military.

The Street
eventually sold more than 1.5 million copies, becoming the first book by a black woman to surpass 1 million books sold and launching Petry as a literary celebrity. The novel was widely reviewed, and a number of articles and interviews with Petry appeared in the black and mainstream press. Given the success of novels such as Richard Wright's
Native Son,
Houghton Mifflin was optimistic, putting its full weight behind the novel. The publisher, expecting the book to attract a primarily black audience, created an extensive publicity campaign targeting black periodicals such as
Negro Digest
,
Ebony
,
Opportunity
, and
Phylon
. Petry's picture appeared on the cover of
Opportunity
, and
Ebony
published a glossy photo layout. Copies of the book were sent to a number of national organizations, including the National Council of Negro Women, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, the Council Against Intolerance in America, and the NAACP. The Urban League promised to
issue pamphlets on Petry, and three of Harlem's bookstores held signing parties, including the National Memorial Bookstore, the Frederick Douglass Bookstore, and the Frances Reckling Book and Music Store. The same year, one of Petry's short stories, “Like a Winding Sheet,” was selected for
The Best American Short Stories
, and the collection was dedicated to her. The New York Women's City Club honored her for her “exceptional contributions to the life of New York City.”
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Following the publication of
The Street
, Petry became identified with a group of African American artists who were drawn to social realism, an aesthetic that expressed a leftist political philosophy and focused on working-class people and their concerns. Although social realism has been viewed as a phenomenon of the Depression era, African American artists and writers continued to work within this aesthetic well into the early years of the Cold War. These artists believed it was their responsibility to raise the democratic consciousness of their readers.
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Among Petry's social realist contemporaries were visual artists John Biggers, Charles White, Hale Woodruff, Elizabeth Catlett, and Ernest Crichlow; poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Melvin Tolson, and Margaret Walker; and novelists William Attaway, Lloyd Brown, Willard Motley, and Richard Wright. The novelists saw fiction as the form that could best serve to educate and reform society.