"I hear you, baby, I hear you."

The thousand-dollar subscriptions poured in. The starry-eyed black people were putting their chips on hope. One after another they went forward solemnly and put down their thousand dollars and signed on the dotted line. The armed guards took the money and stacked it carefully into an open safe in the armored truck.

"How many?" Reverend O'Malley asked one of his secretaries in a whisper.

"Eighty-seven," she whispered in reply.

"Tonight might be your last chance," Reverend O'Malley said over the amplifiers. "Next week I must go elsewhere and give all of our brothers a chance to return to our native land. God said the meek shall inherit the earth; we have been meek long enough; now we shall come into our inheritance."

"Amen, Reverend! Amen!"

Sad-eyed Puerto Ricans from nearby Spanish Harlem and the lost and hungry black people from black Harlem who didn't have the thousand dollars to return to their native land congregated outside the high wire fence, smelling the tantalizing barbecue, dreaming of the day when they could also go back home in triumph and contentment.

"Who's that man?" one of them asked.

"Child, he's the young Communist Christian preacher who's going to take our folks back to Africa."

A police cruiser was parked at the curb. Two white cops in the front seat cast sour looks over the assemblage.

"Where you think they got a permit for this meeting?"

"Search me. Lieutenant Anderson said leave them alone."

"This country is being run by niggers."

They lit cigarettes and smoked in sullen silence.

Inside the fence, three colored cops patrolled the assemblage, swapping jokes with their soul-brothers, exchanging grins, relaxed and friendly.

During a lull in the speaker's voice, two big colored men in dark rumpled suits approached the speaker's table. Bulges from pistols in shoulder slings showed beneath their coats. The guards of the armored truck became alert. The two young recruiting agents, flanking the table, pushed back their chairs.