American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [206]
In the final chapter of his Melville book, James wrote what he called “A Natural but Necessary Conclusion.” It was in part the story of his detention at Ellis Island, but more importantly it was James’s attempt to convince the government that he was not a dangerous subversive and should be allowed to remain in the country. James was not in fact a Communist, but a Trotskyite, and a harsh critic of Stalin and the Soviet Union. “I denounced Russia as the greatest example of barbarism that history has ever known,” James wrote. When he arrived at Ellis Island he was placed in a room with five Communists. Because of his past criticisms of Stalin and the Soviet Union, James feared for his life among these men, “conscious of their murderous past, not only against declared and life-long enemies, but against one another.”
The U.S. government was not interested in parsing the internecine battles among Marxists, sorting out Trotskyites from Stalinists. As far as it was concerned, James was a Marxist critic of capitalism and author of books such as World Revolution 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International and A History of Negro Revolt. There was enough revolution there to expel him from 1950s America.
As much as he played up his anti-Soviet and anti-Stalinist views in the hopes of being allowed to stay in the country, James pulled no punches when it came to government officials. “Hence on Ellis Island, in particular, the arbitrariness, the capriciousness, the brutality and savagery where they think they can get away with it,” James wrote, “the complete absence of any principle except to achieve a particular aim by the most convenient means to hand.” For his guards, however, he had nothing but kind words. “They were a body of men in a difficult spot,” James wrote, “yet they remained, not as individuals but as a body of men, not only human but humane.” Although the government continued to refer to individuals like him as detainees, James thought it “a mockery for me to assist them in still more deceiving the American people.” He and the others at Ellis Island were nothing less than prisoners.
James was freed on bail in October 1952 after four months in detention. His Melville book, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In, was released the following year. Despite the fierce anti-Communism that only a Trotskyite could muster, James was eventually deported to England in 1953. There, he made a living as a writer on cricket. He also traveled back and forth to his native Trinidad, where he became involved in local politics. James eventually returned to the United States for extended visits in the 1970s, when Ellis Island was a dim memory and the Cold War a growing embarrassment for Vietnam-fatigued Americans.
C. L. R. James died in relative obscurity in 1989. Posthumously, James’s reputation would grow as one of the leading black social critics of the twentieth century. Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways would be republished after his death and garner attention in academia and beyond. Ellis Island inspired millions of true-life sagas of joy and heartbreak among the many who passed through there. Few could imagine that it also inspired a major work of literary criticism.
At least C. L. R. James had a home country to which he could be deported. The same could not be said for fifty-two-year-old cabinetmaker Ignatz Mezei. Arriving in February 1950, after a visit to Europe, Mezei was detained at Ellis Island and refused readmittance to the country he had called his home for over twenty-five years. Like Ellen Knauff, Mezei was also refused