Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 43

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They didn't consider these victims as squares or
suckers. They understood them. These people were
seeking a home-just the same as the Pilgrim Fathers.
Harlem is a city of the homeless. These people had
deserted the South because it could never be
considered their home. Many had been sent north by
the white southerners in revenge for the
desegregation ruling, others fled thinking the North
was better. (Himes 26)
Because the North did not provide a "home," Africa became a
symbol of a "big free land which they could proudly call home, for
their were buried the bones of their ancestors."
This is a
representation of an African past in cultural and historical terms,
implying the efforts of Marcus Garvey during the 1920's in Harlem.
Despite this reality, Jones and Johnson share a philosophy of social
justice which goes beyond race and culture. This is likely Himes's own
philosophy, which is presented through the narrator who can be both
satiric and serious when voicing the thoughts of Jones and Johnson.
"But that didn't make a black man any less criminal than a white;
and they had to find the criminals who hijacked the money, black or
white" (Himes 26).
Despite moments of compassion, the two detectives are often
brutal in their handling of certain characters in the novel. The names
of the detectives, "Grave Digger" and "Coffin Ed," represent the
sinister nature of their personalities as thoroughly hardened
detectives who have experienced the rigors of crime, deception, gore
and death. They have survived as satiric commentators on Harlem's
diverse population. However, Coffin Ed and Grave Digger view their
own actions as different from those of white police officers in Harlem.
In one discussion with Lieutenant Anderson, their supervising officer.
Coffin Ed asserts that "the white men on the force commit the
senseless brutality," but Johnson does not deny his own toughness and
goal to root out Harlem "criminals." Johnson and Jones view their job
in cynical terms; in a moment of rage, Jones expresses to Lieutenant
Anderson the seeming futility of fighting crime in Harlem.
We got the highest crime rate on earth among the
colored people in Harlem. And there ain't but three