7;t think I’d do it but there it is. You wouldn’t fix it up. Now see how you like it.” (Ellison 548). African American’s were also treated unfairly in their living quarters. There are more examples of this mistreatment in the book when The Invisible Man awakens to the sound of tenants beating on the pipes, due to no heat, at Mary’s apartment building and also the eviction of the elderly couple, the Provo’s.McKay describes one of the agitators of the Harlem riots, Sufi Hamid and the organization, the Negro Industrial and Clerical Alliance. This organization began the fight for African Americans rights to jobs on 125th street by picketing the merchants. After many influential persons joined the picket lines more African Americans were hired to work on 125th street. But the question was raised by employers, how black is black? They questioned whether to hire the light-skinned persons or the dark-skinned persons. Once the NICA was no longer picketing, the merchants began to terminate their black employees, stating that business was slacking. So for the 8 years that followed, before the Riot of 1943, Harlem was heavily influenced by racial propaganda and so-called leaders who promised a better tomorrow by following them, while condemning blacks to whites in the social forefront. The Harlem Riot of 1935 was not caused by the unfortunate rumors, but the state of mind on which they fell and not the inflammatory leaflets issued several hours before the rioting had begun, but by a sense of injustice being placed on African Americans. This riot did not solve the problems nor change the community’s view of Blacks, as shown by the riot that was soon to follow in 1943....
