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3 An Alien among Outsiders SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING from Cuba, Jones became active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. During one Fair Play demonstration in July 1961, he was arrested.1 Then in late 1961, Jones was elected president of the Fair Play for Cuba’s New York chapter. Spurred on by his pro-Cuban activities , Jones tried to organize a political consciousness-raising group in the Village . Known as the Organization of Young Men (OYM), Jones’s group contained black males only, a fact that he deemed significant because it testified to the growing uneasiness of many black Village-based intellectuals and artists who found themselves isolated from the Civil Rights movement. “We issued at least one statement but the sense of it was that we knew it was time to go on the offensive in the Civil Rights movement. We did not feel part of that movement.”2 It seems rather presumptuous that this group of relatively unknown figures would issue a political statement, as if their opinions, individually or collectively, had public significance. But perhaps recognizing the feebleness of public statements, the group decided that its political duty was to “work” in Harlem. Evidently this group work in Harlem never progressed beyond the planning stage. That in becoming politicized, Jones and his companions thought it necessary to go to Harlem indicated the peculiarity of the emerging racial consciousness of black Village-based intellectuals during the early 1960s. This need to be physically located in Harlem became apparent only a few years after Jones told Podhoretz that Harlem was a haven for the black bourgeoisie. Shortly after its founding, OYM was merged into On Guard, a larger, more experienced, predominantly black group of Village intellectuals. Like the Organization of Young Men, On Guard also decided to be active in Harlem. An office was opened on 125th Street which, Jones notes, allowed them to participate in a “few struggles.” Most of the members of both OYM and On Guard were black male intellectuals who had white wives or lovers. These black men decided that their white female companions could not accompany them to Harlem.3 Their implicit admission of the possibility that they had done something ethnically illegitimate in crossing over the racial barrier in their choice of companions suggests that the journey to Harlem 85 would be, in part, a petition for ethnic reconciliation. Despite being restricted to males, On Guard was an interracial organization. The peculiar taboos associated with interracial heterosexual/intimate relationships meant that white male members could accompany them to Harlem but white women had to stay away. Harold Cruse found it fascinating that in 1961, the LeRoi Jones of On Guard defended interracial political formations even when such defenses alienated black nationalists in Harlem. Cruse, a member of On Guard, claimed that at one of their meetings in Harlem, Jones not only stated that he did not understand why it was necessary to restrict whites from membership but expressed bewilderment as to why black Harlemites hated whites.4 But Cruse never bothered to question the absence of black women (or white women) in On Guard, an omission that probably speaks to his complicity in the organization’s gender dynamics. Even though the members of On Guard had fewer ties to Harlem than to the Village, they believed that the only effective politicization on behalf of the black struggle was one that directly worked with black people.5 In many instances , and certainly in the case of Jones, this belief implied that politics was being used to regain an ethnic legitimacy that had been threatened as a result of living in bohemia. Many of those who felt ethnically illegitimate because of their distance from the political struggles of black America as well as their romantic involvements with white partners soon become exceedingly ethnically identified. Extremism is the religion of recent converts. Jones felt increasingly ambivalent about his bohemian life. The Village had provided him with a setting in which he could create, but he had never felt completely at home there. Even though the literary subculture of the Village was racially liberal, Jones was one of very few blacks to have gained access to its serious artistic circles.6 This sense of racial isolation was accentuated by the increasing political activity taking place in black America during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Jones has consistently written of his distaste for Martin Luther King Jr. and the nonviolent politicization...

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