“What if black people had achieved political power the same way that every other disenfranchised ethnic group had over the course of American politics?”
Virvus Jones found himself pondering the above question repeatedly in his assessment of blacks in politics both as a member of the St. Louis political machine and as a veteran wise counsel for others looking to maneuver through it.
“We were the nice guys,” Jones said. “We said, ‘Well, if we ask these people, if we protest, if we do what no other group has done, then maybe we will have our piece of the pie,’” Jones said. “We tried to ask the people who marginalized us to give us freedom. And these other people – the Jewish, the Irish and the Italians – came in and pulled a Humphrey Bogart. They just took it.”
It’s been 35 years since he was first elected to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. He would go on to be appointed assessor and then appointed as comptroller (and twice reelected). His reflections on what black political power could have looked like became the premise of his newly released debut self-published novel “Stalking Horse.”
“What I’m trying to say is that the only ones to pursue liberty and freedom based on what the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence say were black people,” Jones said. “Everybody else just took it. When you take it, you can hold onto it – when somebody gives you something, they feel like they can take it back. That’s the premise of the book.”
Jones will sign and discuss “Stalking Horse” at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 10 at Legacy Books and Café.
“Stalking Horse” is the first of what Jones says will be three novels that explore an imaginary paradigm shift in the black political machine of the fictional Midwestern town of Petersville. Told through the eyes of Billy Strayhorn, the book gives readers an opportunity to follow the character from a young adolescent exposed to the ills of life on the fringes of an inner-city underbelly. Despite the odds and obstacles, he does make his way inside the walls of City Hall.
In the book, Jones flexes his encyclopedic memory and knack for vivid storytelling – including moments in St. Louis political history through thinly veiled fictional situations. He sets the stage for the power moves that come in the sequels. “This first part of the story is about them getting the political power,” Jones said. “The next part is going to be about them leveraging the political power for economic power. This first book is them getting there – by any means necessary.”
Strayhorn and his crew grew up on the cusp of the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1950s. He decides to work alongside the change agents. In real life, many within the movement parlayed their activism into successful political careers. Not so much for the central character in “Stalking Horse.”
“This guy tries to pursue that same route,” Jones said. “He’s initially involved in the Civil Rights Movement. But he gets beat up and says, ‘Forget it. I ain’t letting nobody whoop my [expletive].’”
So, instead, Strayhorn approached his politics with a position similar to Malcolm X.
“We went the NAACP route and the Urban League route as opposed to the Marcus Garvey route or the Nation of Islam route,” Jones said. “Those folks who followed Garvey and Elijah Muhammad were ostracized and called racists and separatists. But they were no more separatist than the Jewish people who did business with Jews and the Italians who did business with Italians.”
Jones said that systemic racism played a major role in limiting access to intergenerational equity and community building other ethnicities have enjoyed. Still, Jones explores what could have been if black people had operated politically in what he calls “the true American way.”
“You can’t go back and redo history, but you can have a better perspective about it,” Jones said. “There were no voting rights for the Italians, the Irish or the Jews. They just took it. And when they took it, they kept it. They used it to gain and leverage political power – which evolved into economic power.”
Virvus Jones will sign and discuss “Stalking Horse” at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 10 at Legacy Books and Café, 5249 Delmar Blvd. For more information on the book or to purchase a copy, visit https://www.facebook.com/virvus.jones.
