[In the following essay, Reed reminisces about Himes's last visit to America in 1972, noting that Himes was never well-accepted by the literary establishment at home.]

In 1972, when Chester Himes made his triumphant return to the United States on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of his autobiography, The Quality of Hurt, the establishment was just beginning to take revenge on black men for having caused much of the political ferment of the 1960s.

Aware of this atmosphere, Himes said, prophetically, on the television show Soul, that the establishment was going to start a war between black men and black women. Himes was right. And so, unlike in the 1960s, when a vague entity known as the “white power structure” was blamed for the continuing problems of many African Americans, by the late 1980s, African Americans, or more specifically, black men, were blamed for these problems.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the appointed leader of the Talented Tenth, says that the problems of black Americans are “structural,” and “behavioral,” not racial. In his standard speech, he never fails to mention the “38-year-old grandmothers living in the projects,” without neglecting to cite the dramatic decline in out-of-wedlock births among black women since the middle 1990s, just as he announced that black anti-Semitism was on the rise in a Times op-ed, published during a time when the Anti-Defamation League had released a report indicating that black anti-Semitism had declined 8 percent since the 1970s; while anti-Semite Pat Robertson and his millions of white followers were seizing the Republican Party, Gates was saying that anti-Semitism, “generally” was “on the wane.”

Though the charge of misogyny was used as the excuse to indict black men, it was clear that the feminist movement evaluated black and white misogyny differently. Even Senator Packwood boasted, at the height of his problems over sexual harassment, that the leading feminists were reluctant to criticize him, while Clarence Thomas and other black men have had their reputations ruined and the full weight of feminist wrath brought down upon them. Regardless of what one might think of Thomas's politics, his conflict with Anita Hill still remains at the level of “He said, she said.”

The proof of the double standard by which black men and white men are judged, a standard noticed by Joyce Ann Joyce and bell hooks, is the outpouring of support for President Clinton, despite the allegations of sexual misconduct by some of the same black and white feminists who denounced Clarence Thomas. So glaring is this disparity that Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist, publicly apologized to Thomas.

Though living in exile, Chester Himes had a better grip on what lay in the future for African Americans than many writers and intellectuals who resided in the U.S. They did not see the crisis for black men coming.

When Clarence Major, Steve Cannon, Quincy Troupe, Joe Johnson, and I met with Chester and Lesley Himes at New York's Park Lane hotel in 1972, we were able to discuss Chester's insights into this coming crisis, as well as other issues. But by the time Himes returned to the U.S. in 1980, he had sustained such brain damage from a stroke, that he was barely able to communicate and was wheel chair bound. Recently, Larry Jordan, a literary agent, complained about the paucity of African American male fiction writers who have been able, unlike numbers of black women, to create a “crossover” fiction, that is, tap into a large readership of white women. Academic revisionists justify this picture by claiming that at one time black male writers were “valued.” Whenever I hear this, I think of Chester Himes, whose shortage of funds was evident during that final trip home. I also think of John O. Killens, who wrote the best novel about World War II, And Then We Heard the Thunder. The editors of the feminist Norton Anthology of African American Literature didn't even think that this great writer was worthy of inclusion. I think of Richard Wright, who was scrambling for funds toward the end of his life. So was Langston Hughes. I think of John A. Williams, the purest novelist among African American writers who, because of his impudence, has been exiled from big time publishing.

What we have now is an apolitical “Fourth Renaissance,” defined by the Time-Warner conglomerate and designed to avoid making the plastic card crossover consumers uncomfortable. A “Fourth Renaissance” that lacks the fire and guts of the traditional African American artists who saw racism and injustice as the chief impediments to black progress, not Hip Hop music, or Mister [a character in Alice Walker's The Color Purple—eds.] This is still the case. When the Talented Tenth argue that joblessness is the problem of the 1990s and not racism, they ignore the fact that the two are connected. Recently, black farmers complained to the Clinton administration about the difference between the way banks treat them and white farmers. They are denied loans because of racism, not because of defects in their behavior.

In 1932 the Nazis set up something called the Cultural League which decided which Jewish actors could work. One of the requirements was that the Jewish actors avoid work of a political nature. Despite this discrimination, Jewish feminists formed alliances with Aryan feminists, only to be abandoned by their allies as the government became more right-wing. They ended up in the same concentration camps as Jewish men.

Wright, Hughes, and Williams were always political. So was Himes. And even though his health had failed, and he was a dying man, through the efforts of West Coast African American Writers, his last visit to the United States was one during which he was honored.

In my correspondence with Himes, I had told him that he had many fans on the West Coast. Before I knew it, Himes was planning a trip to San Francisco. He and Lesley arrived in May of 1980. Hispanic writer Floyd Salas and I met them at the airport. I installed the couple in an apartment at 1446 6th Street in Berkeley. This was one of two apartments rented by The Before Columbus Foundation and a small press owned by Steve Cannon and me. Among those who had lived there were poet Ted Joans and playwright Adrienne Kennedy while they fulfilled short-term teaching engagements at Berkeley. But the apartment was not adequate for Himes, who, because of his bad back, needed a special bed and other equipment. It was then that Maya Angelou intervened and invited Chester and Lesley to live in her house in the Oakland hills.

Though very ill, Himes still showed flashes of his famous wit. While we were dining at the Caribbean restaurant at Oakland's Bret Harte Walk, named for the western author and one-time Oakland resident, he talked about some of the famous people whom he had known. He had turned down Picasso, his friend, who had offered him some paintings, because he thought that the paintings were absurd. He characterized the movies based upon his novels as “minstrel shows.” When I asked him about his report that John A. Williams had cashed a money order belonging to him, Lesley indicated that he had made it up. Himes had a mischievous glint in his eye as Lesley told about this fib. John A. Williams didn't think it was funny, though. He stopped speaking to Himes after this story was published, but, upon my urging, Williams sent Himes a note when Himes lay dying. But even a debilitated Himes was capable of raising hell. At the time of his California visit, Himes was in trouble at home, in Spain, because he had engaged members of the Spanish Army in a firefight. He had mistaken them for burglars. Lesley said that the type of gun that Himes used during this encounter would fell an elephant. Himes smiled as Lesley told the story with the appropriate gentle scolding in her voice.

When I left for Dartmouth to teach during the summer session, Chester and Lesley moved to my house and lived there for the duration of their visit. A number of people in the Oakland area entertained Chester and Lesley. The highlight of the celebration was a party hosted by the Black Scholar magazine. Lesley Himes, who was devoted to Chester, still remembers the kindness that Californians showed toward Chester during his visit to the country that was often hostile toward his outspokenness, and his refusal to compromise, his courage to express what he called “the unthinkable.” He said openly what others only whispered about.

Himes, Killens and Williams saved me and other younger writers from much pain and disillusionment. A writer like Amiri Baraka, for example, has reached far beyond the conservative experiments of the late Ralph Ellison, who has been awarded literary sainthood by the New York literary Establishment, the folks who manipulate trends in American literature. Yet, Baraka is still treated as a kind of enfant terrible of American literature.

Himes is treated in the same manner. The experience of Himes, Williams, Baraka, and others proves that, in the American literary game, acceptance by the Establishment is based not on how you say it, but what you say.