Chester Himes’ System Classism study of America holds true today.
Not many people know the work of the late great Chester Himes by name, though they may have seen some of his work from the Coffin Ed/Gravedigger Jones series horribly adapted into some of the most boring, shitty, terrible, no good films ever made. Yeah, I’m looking at you Cotton Comes To Harlem, Come Back Charleston Blue, and the abysmal, Rage In Harlem. Just ignore that for a second, and feast your eyes onto Himes’ most infamous yet classic novel, Run, Nigger, Run.
Now let me tell you the motherfucking tea about this novel. When it came out in the 1960s, America just wasn’t ready for it. So the story goes, it was completely blackballed. Nobody would touch it. Himes, who was transitioning into moving and living in France, found a French imprint called Gallimard, who had a Serie Noire imprint, and got it published in the French language as Dare-Dare. Only after being a hit over there did the book finally get released in the states under GP Putman and Sons, and under the neutered title Run, Man, Run. The year it came out in America is in question, since the American releases have the official year he copywrote it and not the year of release. Some sources say the American 1st edition didn’t hit shelves until after Himes’ death. I can’t say.
What I do know is, Run, Nigger, Run is a bad motherfucker to dishevel people all these years later after its initial release.
The opening of Run, Nigger, Run isn’t anything you’d be expecting.
The entire novel is about a racist ass off duty detective named Walker. He’s a angry ass drunk, a northern white nationalist at heart, and got a touch of the drunk amnesia because he can’t figure out where the fuck he parked his car. Now instead of realizing the extent of his inebriation, this motherfucker right here naturally assumes that some Black dudes have stolen in from in front of a flagship store in downtown with the old school lunch counters on the first floor, so this is the Josephine Baker era of Blacks through the back door, even in liberal Manhattan.
Anyway, this asshole gets to seeing Black folks cleaning up on the night shift, pretty much breaks in, and holds Luke, one of the kitchen hands, up at gunpoint. Luke, seeing a white man with a gun who also flashing a badge, recommends they go talk to Fat Sam, the sassy cook with a mouth on him. That didn’t go well, mostly because Fat Sam didn’t take how serious the drunk racist cop was until it was too late and Luke finds that out when Walker shows him Fat Sam’s body. Walker now, is thinking how he’s going to get out of it by tying up loose ends, as in kill Luke, the witness. Now Jimmy, the third man in this, he’s taking out the garbage and walks right in at the wrong time right after Walker shoots Luke, then shoots his ass too. The only thing is, he didn’t die.
Welcome to Run, Nigger, Run.
Jimmy gets completely fucked up but is able to tell Joe, part of the morning crew that Fat Sam and Luke are dead before passing out from loss of blood. Cops show up to investigate and Jimmy fingers Walker for the crime when he regains consciousness. Well, that’s where the problem starts. Walker is, of course, on the scene and makes the most of that. For one, he makes sure no one suspects him, especially since he didn’t use his service pistol to kill everybody and his tampering with the crime scene making sure his fingerprints are all over everything so his Captain can make it a note that it would stand to reason if his prints came up since he touched stuff. Two, Walker gets called into interrogation and bold face lies on Jimmy, saying Jimmy accused him of shooting him, that he didn’t see him, that he didn’t see he worked there by his uniform because he was just a Negro. They smell the bullshit, know he’s been drinking, know something in the milk ain’t clean but they take him for his word because, he’s a white man. Three, they throw Jimmy in jail the minute he wakes up because it’s a Black man’s word against a white man’s.
See where Himes is going with this? Just all types of shit that is still relatable today.
Eventually Jimmy gets bail after his wife and child come and sees him with the lawyer. His lawyer tells him to take a week off of work, let his injury heal, stay out of sight, mostly because it made the paper that he fingered Walker for the crime. And that’s where Run, Nigger, Run earns his title. Walker gets to stalking him and anyone he thinks is in his way in a drunken stupor all over NYC. I’m talking he can’t take a shit without worrying Walker’s in the stall next to him trying to shoot him on the toilet. From there this is a thriller that ends with an ending you’re either going to love or hate. No one gets the prize.
This ain’t a easy novel. It can be boring and dated in parts, and the thriller parts are few and far between. The ending is an underwhelmed clusterfuck that was a big ass let down that gives the reader no payoff after multiple build ups and rampant racism that everybody knows is going on but just don’t have the fart power to do anything about it.
If anything, you read Run, Nigger, Run because of the controversy it kicked off. A novel like this, written by a man that suffered from racist policies and did indeed go to jail, had the balls to throw America’s class and racial biases on parade in a bold and militant fuck America moment that has not been replicated since, and all from Europe! That’s why you read this, because the same shit that was going on back in the 1960s is still going on and this novel takes you through everybody’s emotions when shit hits the fan and the grits burn in the pan.
It’s not a classic per se, but one of the strongest works of Himes’ catalog next to Pink Toes.
