Shvartses, Black people, have always intrigued me, even enticed me, ever since I read the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in my childhood. Who among us has not wept as children reading the moving book by the American writer [Harriet] Beecher Stowe? ^{3 3} Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling 1852 novel was translated into dozens of languages within a decade of its publication, including into Yiddish in 1868 by Isaac Meir Dik. On the transatlantic reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Sarah Meer, Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2005). For an introduction of Dik’s Yiddish translation, see Isaac Meir Dik, “Slavery or Serfdom,” translated by Eli Rosenblatt, In geveb (November 2015). But where in Poland could one spot a Black person? The most people here ^{4 4} In the early part of this article, Singer repeatedly reminds us that he is only in America as a short-term visitor. Although he is in New York at the time this article is written, he uses the terms “here” and “our” to refer back to Poland—the point of view to which his readership has become accustomed. can see is a little caked-up “Black” man at the opera, carrying a sword on a silk pillow for a sultan. The sultan will use it to slaughter his unfaithful harem-wife because she had looked for a moment at a different man, when her guard, the eunuch, had taken a quick nap… Or sometimes in the circus there performs a Black dancer. Lately, Black people have been featured in our dance halls, but the audiences say these are actually unemployed Jewish young people who disguise themselves as Black people in order to make a living. ^{5 5} Singer is likely referring here to actors who dress in Blackface.

Yes, in the movies here in Poland we are shown Black people, but they are just as theatrical as the “Black” actors in the Warsaw opera. Either they dance like a crazy person and bang wooden blocks, or they hang little teapots from their noses. ^{6 6} It is unclear if Singer’s phrase “klapn in heltser” – literally “clapping against wood”—refers to the literal action or is a way of saying “tapdancing.” Minstrel cabaret shows often had musical elements that were performed in derogatory ways. “Clapping against wood” may have been a reference to the “bones,” a folk instrument played by various African groups that was commonly depicted in minstrel shows. In all likelihood, he is describing a derogatory form of primitive performance. Or they are devoured by lions and tigers, in order to give us pleasure.

Recently I even saw in a movie how a Black king of a tribe in Africa had dressed himself with a chamber pot on his head when he went to meet several English missionaries who wanted to bring the king under the wing of Christianity. This was a beautiful piece of jewelry, which the king’s subjects had found in a field. It was a “souvenir” of a missionary leader who had come to spread the divine teachings of Christ and in the process had gotten indigestion. The subjects gave the chamber pot to their king, and then the king, who grew to like the gift very much, decided he was to put it on only in highly ceremonial moments, such as when a delegation of English missionaries was coming… ^{7 7} Singer does not offer the title of this film, but depicts what was a common type of primitive racialization in Western movies about Africans and Blackness in the early twentieth century. For more on Western film and the construction of race, see Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012); Christopher P. Lehman, “Black representation in American short films, 1928-1954” (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2002); Glenn Reynolds, “Image and empire: Anglo-American cinematic interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1921-1937” South African Historical Journal Vol 48 (2003): 90-108; and Kevin Dunn, “Lights…Camera…Africa: Images of Africa and Africans in Western Popular Films of the 1930s” African Studies Review Vol 39 No 1 (Apr. 1996): 149-175.

When I came to New York and noticed the Black workers on the cargo boats—normal workers that were pulling up ropes and lifting heavy weights and covered in sweat—I couldn’t believe my eyes.

-- “Look” — I showed fellow ship passengers, — “Shvartses, Black workers.”

A German journalist had once had the same exact reaction when I pointed out Jewish workers to him in Warsaw.

-- “My God, are they real Jews?” – He had asked.

He thought that Jews were only bankers and proprietors of department stores, or else mystics in the play “The Dybbuk”.

My American fellow-travelers had not understood my amazement.

-- “You’ll see them here in the millions,” -- they said. –“Eventually, you’ll get bored of them.”

I was quite intrigued, and straight upon my arrival I went to Harlem, the kingdom of Black people. And it was not boring to me. On the contrary, the more I wandered around in those streets and alleys, the more I observed the Black residents: from the wealthy in the automobiles to the poor in the door stoops, from the old to the young, from the men to the women, from the commoners to the intellectuals – the more they interested me, and the more I wanted to see them.

It was in fact their simplicity, their being like all the others, their having uprooted from themselves every trace of Africa – that was what interested me about them. I am more interested in a Black person in elegant, white clothing and a bright hat on their head, than the Black king with the chamber pot on his head.

Woe, woe, when I think about what scholars have written about race-traits, about blood, about pedigree! The Hitlerists, and even many scholars and academics, believe that a German whose veins have even a drop of Jewish blood from a great-great-grandmother can no longer be an authentic German, and he mustn’t mix with men of illustrious descent, the blond and blue-blooded Nordic!

And here I see before myself Black people, whose great-grandfathers had crawled naked up the tall African trees, exactly like monkeys. What true gentlemen they are, the young Black people in white pants that walk around the streets; what hundred-percent ladies they are, these slim young Black girls, who wear such colorful clothing and go with such a grace and worldliness, as though they proudly bear an ancestry of forty generations of aristocrats.

The strength of our civilization is inestimable. How quickly the sons of hot Africa have achieved respectability! The men, who were once quick and slim, ready for battle with the most dangerous beasts in the jungle, in the wild forests, able to jump and climb over the smoothest and tallest trees, now have gotten weary feet that yearn for rest, and tired hands that are now only used for clearing their pipes. The farsighted eyes that were able to catch sight of a distant beast have become nearsighted. You see many Black people now with glasses.

The slim women that could once dance for days on end around the gods have been transformed into fat meaty ladies that carry around with them all kinds of weaknesses and sicknesses; and the Black intelligent girls, the teachers and students, are weak and anemic. The anemia is visible through their Black skin.

The only bit of Africanness, of aboriginality, that remains among Black children can be seen in the Harlem Cabarets. There the young Black women dance for dollars with such fervor, with such passion, just like their sisters in Africa. In each wriggle of the naked stomach, with each turn of the hips, in every nod, there is so much desire, heat, passionate surrender, that it seems one finds oneself not in boiling, bright, noisy New York, but somewhere in hot southern Africa.

However, in this Black cabaret there isn’t a single Black person among the guests, merely white gentlemen and ladies. Whether the Black people are so poor that they cannot pay a few dollars to enter, or whether they are not allowed to be around in the first place – that I don’t know. I am convinced that people are not happy to see them in the elegant cabaret in Harlem, which is created for the white wealthy man, and therefore Black guests are not seen here, even those who are rich. All the workers are Black – the servants, the waiters, the male and female dancers, yet there is not a single Black guest to be seen.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had the task of eliciting compassion for Black slaves, the protagonist was described as a mulatta, half-white, because fully Black people would have had difficulty obtaining a white tear. So too, the owners of the Black cabarets make a similar effort to select their male and female dancers from among the half-Black people. Most of the girls are mulattos, with a mix of white blood. Only the comedians, who do all kinds of tricks and jokes in order to entertain the public, are authentic Black people. On the contrary, the blacker the comedians are, the better their act, the more laughter they get.

For example, there stood one of them, a “true” Black person, as if he just got polished entirely with shoe wax. He shook with his moving eyes, tore at his thick Black-person-lips and said obscene language, eliciting wild laughter from the respectable ladies and men.

There is something offensive and awkward in this transformation of a real, hot-blooded passionate Black healthy man into a foul-mouthed being, a person who speaks dirty words, who issues white, grotesque double entendres through his wild white teeth

Another sturdy Black man—who would have perhaps become a king or the best hunter of lions and tigers in Africa due to his power and talent—threw himself on the ground, shaking his thick bottom lip, contorted his face into that of a dog’s and, with the most exceptional dexterity known to man, spun and rolled around on the ground to pick up a few quarters that were thrown for him.

But the dancers, romantic and well-dressed—they are mostly mulattos. Some of them are so white, blond even, such that their Blackness is unidentifiable. Yet my friend L. Krishtol assures me that they are, in fact, Black. ^{8 8} Leon Krishtol (1894-1954) was a journalist from Podolia who immigrated to the United States 1914. Like Singer, he worked as an international correspondent for Forverts starting in the 1920s. He also translated plays for the Yiddish theater, including Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness” and Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” often under the pen name G. Rivesman. See Berl Cohen, “Krishtol, Leon (1894-August 21, 1954)” Leksikon Fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur, Congress for Jewish Culture, https://congressforjewishculture.org/lexicon/t/926. You have to be an American to see it.

And in the lit-up movies, it is ten cents to enter, packed with thousands of Black people, mostly young women and men. They look with admiration at the romantic images of the white actors and actresses, they kiss each other like the “stars” on the screen, and they flirt and chew chewing gum. In the cheap dance halls Black couples swing to the beat of the music that white composers have made as an expression of Black culture. In the restaurants and cafeterias Black women drink red drinks, wipe their made-up lips and powder their faces. On the corners are speakers, giving passionate speeches, to which no herd flocks. A towering Black policeman safeguards morality, which ought not be desecrated by a couple kissing somewhere on a corner, and over it all, New York dazzles with blinding electrical red light, and a Jewish jewelry shop brightly flashes a thousand electric eyes, advertising that diamonds and jewels for adorning black necks and ears can be bought there.

The moon, shame-faced and far away, peeks in and hides behind the clouds. It’s as though she’d be ashamed to see what’s become of the children of the hot, free, and wild Africa.