And now even in Africa I was confronted by the specter, the white terror always pursuing the black. There was no escape anywhere from the white hound of Civilization.
When I finally left Fez I proceeded to Marrakesh in the far south, the hot city of the plains, vast and wild. The Senegalese in Marseilles often mentioned Marrakesh as the former great caravansérai for the traders traveling between West Africa and North Africa, and so I had to see that monumental city, which was founded by a Senegalese conqueror. Marrakesh moved me. It was like a big West Indian picnic, with flags waving and a multitude of barefoot black children dancing to the flourish of drum, fiddle and fife.
When I was going to Morocco, some Europeans on the boat had remarked facetiously that Morocco was not a Negro country. Themselves divided into jealous cutthroat groups, the Europeans have used their science to make such fine distinctions among people that it is hard to ascertain what white is a true white and when a Negro is really a Negro. I found more than three-quarters of Marrakesh Negroid. There were unimaginably strange contrasts. The city is like an immense cradle of experiment in the marriage of civilized life and primitive life. Here the sun-baked ebony Sudanese and the rude brown Berbers of the Atlas meet and mingle with the refined, learned and skilled city Moors of the north. Marrakesh appeared to be the happiest city of the French Protectorate. The people seemed more contented than in Fez, although they were generally poorer. But poverty in a torrid climate is not anything like poverty in a cold climate. I might say, without poetic license, that in Marrakesh the sun, blazing without being murderous, seemed to consume a lot of the wretchedness and ugliness of poverty.
The New Negro in Paris
I finished my native holiday in Marrakesh. In Casablanca I found a huge pile of mail awaiting me. The handsomest thing was a fat envelope from a New York bank containing a gold-lettered pocket book. The pocket book enclosed my first grand from the sale of Home to Harlem.
There were stacks of clippings with criticisms of my novel; praise from the white press, harsh censure from the colored press. And a lot of letters from new admirers and old friends and associates and loves. One letter in particular took my attention. It was from James Weldon Johnson, inviting me to return to America to participate in the Negro renaissance movement. He promised to do his part to facilitate my return if there were any difficulty. And he did.
The Johnson letter set me thinking hard about returning to Harlem. All the reports stressed the great changes that had occurred there since my exile, pictured a Harlem spreading west and south, with splendid new blocks of houses opened up for the colored people. The reports described the bohemian interest in and patronage of Harlem, the many successful colored shows on Broadway, the florescence of Negro literature and art, with many promising aspirants receiving scholarships from foundations and patronage from individuals. Newspapers and magazines brought me exciting impressions of a more glamorous Harlem. Even in Casablanca a Moor of half-German parentage exhibited an article featuring Harlem in an important German newspaper, and he was eager for more information.