45 pages • 1 hour read
Chester HimesCotton Comes To Harlem
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed examine the body of the fake black detective working for Deke, who has forged credentials from the DA. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed also learn the other man struck by the truck, Early Riser, was a conman who worked with a partner. No witnesses will talk about what happened, since everyone is “stone blind” when it comes to helping the cops. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find traces of cotton in the meat truck: “A mob of white bandits and cotton—in Harlem. Figure that one out” (22). Since no witnesses will come forward, Coffin Ed and Grave Digger track down informants (or “pigeons”) who can give them information. At one bar, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed take a brief respite listening to some jazz: “The emotion that comes out of experience. If we could read that language, man, we would solve all the crimes in the world” (23).
Coffin Ed and Grave Digger noticed Early did drugs, so they go to a bar in a rough neighborhood where drugs are sold. A prostitute propositions them but backtracks once she realizes they’re cops and insists she doesn’t know anything. One of the drunks in the bar, Cousin, follows Grave Digger and Coffin Ed to their car and describes Early’s scam of cutting out lady’s purses. Cousin tells them how to find a witness named Hijenks, who can help them locate Early’s partner, Loboy.
Chapter 6 Summary
Deke knows the police are after him and leaves Harlem to regroup. At Penn Station, he calls the wife (Mabel) of John Hill, the recruiting agent who got shot during the meat truck robbery, to find out if the police are at her apartment. The police asked her questions earlier, but Mabel could tell they were unbelievers: “They were—well, they were white and I knew they were unsympathetic” (28). Deke arranges to meet up with her, asking her to turn out the lights and give him a special code when he buzzes at the door if the police return. As Deke waits for a taxi, several white drivers pass him until a black driver finally picks him up and takes him back to Harlem.
At the apartment Mabel fawns over Deke, not seeming to care much about her deceased husband: “My God, he thought, this bitch has already forgotten her dead husband and he isn’t even in his coffin” (30). Deke prays with Mabel, making sexual innuendos. After Mabel goes to sleep, Deke calls his contact, Barry Waterfield, and tells Barry how to get in touch with him. Deke has a sexual dream. When he wakes up, Mabel comes to him, half-dressed and distressed, saying she had a nightmare about betraying him. Deke comforts her and tells her it’s God’s will for them to have sex. She willingly complies.
Chapter 7 Summary
Coffin Ed and Grave Digger call Lieutenant Anderson and learn not much has progressed with the case, so they decide to pursue Loboy. On the way they pass the junkman, Uncle Bud, but decide not to bother him. In the bar Grave Digger holds the barman at gunpoint while Coffin Ed follows the pigeon’s instructions to get into the secret room in the bathroom. Grave Digger knocks out the barman and follows him. Inside they encounter Hijenks behind a partitioned room. Hijenks initially resists giving them information but eventually sends them to Sarah, a prostitute who lives in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Sarah won’t rat on Loboy, but Grave Digger and Coffin Ed promise he isn’t in trouble; they just want to ask him questions about the hijacking and what he might have seen. After reminding Sarah that several poor black people lost their life savings, she agrees to help Grave Digger and Coffin Ed. Loboy is hiding in the back. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed question Loboy, but he doesn't remember what the white people looked like: “All white folks look alike to me” (38). Grave Digger and Coffin Ed return to the station and report to Anderson that it was a waste of time. Anderson is sick of the whole mess and just wants to go home. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed also call it a night, but when they go to the garage, their car has been stolen. They both agree not to waste their time reporting it.
Chapter 8 Summary
A new building opens in Harlem: the headquarters for the Back-to-the-Southland movement, headed by the white Colonel Calhoun, who tries to convince black people to move back to the South and pick cotton. The murals on the building depict happy black people making lots of money from their white masters. A small sign in the window advertises the need for a bale of cotton. The black neighborhood is outraged at the Back-to-the-South movement: “These peckerwoods don’t know what they want. One day they’s sending us north to get rid of us, and the next they’s up here tryna con us into going back” (42).
Colonel Calhoun’s young white assistant worries about an uprising, but Calhoun reassures him that dark people aren’t dangerous, they just need to be told what to do: “You got to learn to think of niggers with love and charity” (41). Deke’s colleague Barry shows up and explains the Back-to-Africa movement to Calhoun, as well as the trouble they’ve gotten into with Deke being hijacked. Calhoun thinks it’s a bad idea to go to Africa and that black people will be better off going South: “We love and take care of our darkies” (43). Barry agrees and offers to give Calhoun the names of all the families who signed up to go back to Africa, for a price. Calhoun arranges to meet with him that night. Barry agrees, noticing the advertisement for the bale of cotton on his way out.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
As Grave Digger and Coffin Ed search for Deke, Himes shines a scathing light on the criminal world they deal with day to day, full of junkies, prostitutes, pigeons, scammers, and even the cops themselves. As Lieutenant Anderson muses, “Harlem was a mean rough city and you had to be meaner and rougher to keep any kind of order” (39). Grave Digger and Coffin Ed embody this idea in how they interact with Harlem’s criminal population, harassing and roughing up anyone who stands in their way, even those not directly involved in the crime, like the barman Grave Digger holds at gunpoint (34). Like Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, the people of Harlem having a dog-eat-dog mentality; several people—including some patrons and a junkie—see the barman being held at gunpoint and do nothing to help him. One brief moment of reprieve comes when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed pause to listen to jazz at one of the bars. As Grave Digger muses, “Life could be great but there are hoodlums abroad” (23). Grave Digger can appreciate the beautiful things in life, but his world is so rough that he must harden himself to survive it.
Deke’s adventures continue the theme of religious hypocrisy. Exploiting his role as a man of God, Deke seduces Mabel through prayer and by telling her “God’s will must be served” (32). Though Deke is predatory, the hypocrisy in people like Mabel, who follow Deke blindly as long as it gives them a sense of purpose, shines through:
“More than anything she wanted to escape her drab existence; if she couldn’t be middle class and live in a big house in the suburbs she wanted to leave it all and go back to Africa, where she just knew she would be important” (29).
People like Mabel allow Deke to continue to take advantage and thrive.
Racial tensions in the novel heighten with the introduction of Colonel Calhoun. Calhoun acts as a stereotype of White Southernness and peddles racist stereotypes about “innocent” and “gullible” black people who just need a strong guiding hand (43). Through Calhoun, Himes highlights how many white people continued to view the black population, as well as the continuing exploitation of black people in America.
Himes returns briefly to the bale of cotton in Chapter 7, when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed spot Uncle Bud with it, and again in Chapter 8, with the advertisement for the bale of cotton in the window of the Back-to-the-Southland movement building. These repeated references indicate the importance of the cotton and its whereabouts to the story while also connecting the cotton with Colonel Calhoun and the South.
