Free Three Days Before the Shooting ... by Ralph Ellison

attacks against Negroes have become so gratuitous and in such extremely bad taste as to cause resentment far beyond the Negro community. Recently even reporters have found his provocations revolting.
    Listening as they furiously re-created the Sunraider legend, I felt that, despite the heated blending of fact and fiction, real incident and rumor, cold observation and wild opinion, no one, not even those who “knew” the Senator, seemed to know exactly who he was, nor what to make of him. It was difficult to decide whether he was actually as reactionary or as radical as some of the men were insisting. For in matters like his support of scientific research, his efforts to preserve our national resources, our parks and shorelines, he seemed forward-looking. In other matters he seemed like a figure out of some past which had never existed—at least not in our history.
    But what was clear is that there is something basically willful, quirky, exasperatingly capricious, and downright questionable about him. And there was no question but that even while lying shot, with his voice silenced and with no cloak of charm and eloquence to shield or project himself, he had, through the simple expedient of having a Negro present during his hour of mortal crisis, rendered himself even more confusing in the public mind.
    And yet, as one man was pointing out, in spite of the confusion which he created, for many people the Senator possesses a mysterious charm, a charisma .
    “You know,” the man was saying, “the reason why I say this is that I’ve felt it myself. I went to see him about a certain matter, and a most interesting thing occurred ….”
    “You mean that he hit you for a contribution?”
    “Oh, no, nothing like that. We were talking over a proposition, and all of a sudden I could actually feel the magnetism surging from the man. It was almost physical, a vibration. Unfortunately he was unable to do anything about my immediate problem, but I left his office feeling that everything would work out okay. And so it did, by the way. Up to then I’d been pessimistic.”
    “Yes, I experienced something similar,” another man said. “I never talkedabout it before because it’s pretty strange. Still, I discovered that he has the ability to make you feel somehow relieved.”
    “What do you mean by ‘relieved’?”
    “Relieved of my uncertainties, of some of my deepest fears ….”
    “Maybe so, but I don’t get you.”
    “I don’t either,” I said. “Develop it a bit.”
    “It’s hard to explain. But the way he goes over the details of a problem and relates them to other things, to other moves in government, to the economic cycles, you come away feeling that you’re ten times more perceptive than you usually are.”
    “But perceptive of what?”
    The man reddened, gave a quick shake of his head.
    “Hell, of life, events; of the patterns underlying the processes of public affairs. What am I, a philosopher? What I’m trying to convey is something he makes you feel—or makes me feel.”
    A faraway look came into his eyes as he broke off, shaking his head again.
    Suddenly I felt uneasy, as though we had approached an unknown, dangerous, and somehow unclean territory dominated by one near death. The image of a grimacing halitosis ad flashed through my mind.
    “You know,” another man said, “I believe that one of the main sources of the Senator’s power lies in his ability to make so many people feel that he justifies their weaknesses . He makes them feel that they have a human right to be weak, and he even justifies their unfairness to others weaker than themselves.”
    “Oh, bull!” a man wearing a hairbrush moustache said. “You make him sound like some kind of saint of negative permissiveness!”
    “No,” the man said, completely undaunted by the rococo definition, “I don’t mean to do anything like that. But whether we like it or not, many people seek comfort from their political leaders, and the