The Last Ballad(88)

Sophia introduced Hampton to party leaders: Secretary Alec Weisbord, one of the organizers of the Passaic strike and the only one among them who’d traveled outside the country after the party had sent him to Mexico and Moscow; Velma Burch, a fellow organizer; and eventually Fred Beal, who was from Lawrence, Massachusetts, and who, by the autumn of 1928, had organized the textile strike in New Bedford, which everyone except Beal viewed as an embarrassing failure.

“What the party needs is diversity,” Sophia said. “What it needs are more people like you, Hampton.”

So, in the fall of 1928 Hampton set out to recruit his fellow Pullman porters into the Communist Party. A few of the men he worked with, most of them much older than Hampton and with wives and children to support back home, would attend the occasional meeting with him, nod their heads, even speak if they felt led to speak, but they slowly drifted away, begged off when he invited them to more meetings or organized rallies. One night, after a meeting of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Hampton understood what was happening.

At the conclusion of the evening, Randolph called Hampton’s name and asked him to come down to the speaker’s stand at the front of the room. Then, as the hall emptied out, Hampton watched Randolph gather his papers and file them into a suitcase before reaching for his hat. He turned and looked at Hampton.

“Mr. Haywood,” he said, “would you walk with me?”

They left the hall and turned west on 139th Street, walked toward the river. It was January 1929. Mounds of dirty snow were piled beneath the streetlamps. Christmas decorations still hung in shop windows. Hampton tipped his hat toward his eyes and pulled up his coat’s collar. He put his hands into its pockets. Randolph walked beside him.

“What are you doing, Mr. Haywood?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Hampton said.

They kept walking, their shoes stepping alternately on cement, ice, compacted snow.

“This girl,” Randolph said, “this Blevin; how long have you known her?”

“A year,” Hampton said, caught off guard at the mention of Sophia’s name. “A year and a half, maybe.”

“How long have you known of her affiliations with the Communist Party?”

“For as long as I’ve known her.”

“I see,” Randolph said.

They stopped on the corner of Broadway. The night sky had begun to release tiny ribbons of snow. A diner sat on the corner. Inside, a young black boy and a man who could have been his father, a man about Hampton’s age, were drinking something hot from the same mug. They passed it back and forth across the table. The boy said something, the man laughed. Hampton recalled his father’s face, the sound of his laugh, the feel of his father’s hand spread across his chest that morning on the train, his fingers passing over Hampton’s head before he disappeared forever.

“You could have a future in the Brotherhood, Mr. Haywood,” Randolph said. “You’re young, hungry, smart. Don’t ruin it. Don’t encourage your brothers to ruin it.”

“What are you saying?” Hampton asked.

“I’m suggesting that you stick with whom and what you know.”

“You’re telling me not to mix with white people,” Hampton said.

“Not the ones who will get you killed. And, Mr. Haywood, there are many kinds of death.”

With that, Randolph turned the corner and headed north on Broadway. Hampton watched him go; then he looked at the table inside the diner where the boy and the man had been sitting. They now stood by the cash register. The man let go of the boy’s hand, reached for his wallet. The boy turned, saw Hampton staring at him through the window. He waved. Hampton waved back.

Hampton decided to leave the Brotherhood and threw himself into the Communist Party. He wanted to be bold, heroic. He wanted to lift all workers, not just himself and those who looked like him. He knew a story would be concocted about him somewhere along the way, a story that would take the form of some kind of official grievance against him. He’d be dismissed from his job as a Pullman porter. His coworkers would raise their eyebrows and shrug their shoulders as if in disbelief, but everyone knew that when you left the Brotherhood you left your job as well.

It had been more than five months since his walk with Randolph, and he’d stayed on the job as a Pullman porter so far, but he was certain the job wouldn’t be there for him once he returned north after this trip to Gastonia.

Hampton had asked for an extended leave. He’d tried to keep his reason quiet from his supervisor, but it wouldn’t be long before his coworkers knew what it was about, especially with his traveling by train, which is how the union decided he should travel. Randolph had already found out that Hampton knew Sophia Blevin, had found out that he’d joined the Communist Party. Surely he’d find out that Hampton was traveling south to organize black workers at the behest of Weisbord, who’d become secretary of the National Textile Workers Union. It was a secret too big, too political, too incendiary to keep.

The sunset burned outside the train’s window. He’d reached North Carolina. The train had already passed through Greensboro, stopped in High Point. He’d traveled this route as a porter too many times to count, and he ticked off the stations as the train slowed down and passed through them: Thomasville, Lexington, Linwood. Spencer was next, then Salisbury.