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# Going South in Russia

By LANGSTON HUGHES

TO an American Negro living in the northern part of the United States the word *South* has an unpleasant sound, an overtone of horror and of fear. For it is in the South that our ancestors were slaves for three hundred years, bought and sold like cattle. It is in the South today that we suffer the worst forms of racial persecution and economic exploitation — segregation, peonage, and lynching. It is in the Southern states that the color line is hard and fast, Jim Crow rules, and I am treated like a dog. Yet it is in the South that two-thirds of my people live: a great Black Belt stretching from Virginia to Texas, across the cotton plantations of Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, down into the orange groves of Florida and the sugarcane lands of Louisiana. It is in the South that black hands create the wealth that supports the great cities—Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, where the rich whites live in fine houses on magnolia-shaded streets and the Negroes live in slums like those of South America.

Two springs ago I came almost directly out of this American South to the Soviet Union. You can imagine the contrast. No need for me to write about it. And after a summer in Moscow, I found myself packing up to go South again—but, this time, South under the red flag. I was starting out from Moscow, capital of the new world, bound for Central Asia to discover how the yellow and brown peoples live and work there. I wanted to compare their existence with that of the colored and oppressed peoples I had known under capitalism in Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and my own United States. I wanted to study the life of these dark people in the Soviet Union, and write a book about them for the dark races of the capitalist world.

On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps

and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences.

I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, "We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way in the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express.

Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow

and am not Jim-Crowned, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowned, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union."

In the car ahead of mine there is a man almost as brown as I am. A young man dressed quite ordinarily in a pair of tan trousers and a nondescript grey coat. Some Asiatic factory worker who has been to Moscow on a vacation, I think. We talk a little. He asks me what I do for a living, and I ask him what he does. I am a writer. He is the mayor of Bokhara, the Chairman of the City Soviet! I make a note in the back of my mind: "In the Soviet Union dark men are also the mayors of cities," for here is a man who is the head of a very famous city, old Bokhara, romantic Bokhara known in stories and legends the world over.

In the course of our conversation, I learned that there were many cities in Central Asia where dark men and women are in control of the government. And I thought about Mississippi where more than half of the population is Negro, but one never hears of a colored person in the government. In fact, in that state Negroes cannot even vote. And you will never meet them riding in the sleeping car.

Here, there were twelve of us going South from Moscow, for I was traveling with a Negro group from Mezhrabpom Film on a tour of the Soviet Union.

Kurbanov, for that was the name of the young Uzbek from the Bokhara Soviet, came often to talk to us. He was a mine of information about the liberation of Central Asia and the vast changes that have come about there after the Revolution. Truly a land of Before and After. Before the Revolution, emirs and khans, mullahs and beys. After the Revolution, the workers in power. Before, one-half of one per cent of the people literate. Now, fifty per cent read and write. Before, education solely for the rich, mostly in religious schools; and no schools in the villages. Now, free schools everywhere. Before, the land was robbed of its raw materials for the factories of the Russian capitalists. Now, there are big plants, electric stations, and textile mills in Asia. Before, no theatres, no movies, no modern culture. Now, national art encouraged and developed everywhere. Before, Kurbanov said, the natives were treated like dogs. Now, that is finished, and Russian and native, Jew and gentile, white and brown, live and work together. Before, no intermarriages of white and brown, now there are many. Before, Kurbanov himself was a herd-boy in the mountains. Now, he is the Chairman of a city soviet, the mayor of a large

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and ancient city. Truly, Soviet Asia is
a land of Before and After, and the
Revolution is creating a new life that
is changing the history of the East.

We gathered these things not only
from our Uzbek comrade, but from
many other passengers we met on the
long train during the five days and nights
southeast to Central Asia. There was
a woman librarian from Leningrad, who
had been home on a vacation going
back to the work of which she spoke
with pride—the growth of the library
at Tashkent, the large number of books
in the native languages with the new
Latin alphabet that were now being pub-
lished, and the corresponding growth of
native readers. There was a young Red
Army man who told us of the camara-
derie and understanding growing up be-
tween lads of widely different environ-
mental backgrounds in the Red Army
School at Tashkent. There was a Rus-
sian merchant privileged to help in the
building of new industries in an ancient
and once backward, but now awakening
Asia. And there were two young
Komsomol poets going from Moscow to
work on publications for the encourage-
ment of national literature in the young
writers of Soviet Asia.

One night, we held a meeting with
the members of the train crew not then
on duty. Our Negro group and the
workers of the express exchanged in-
formation and ideas. They told us
about their work and their part in the
building of socialism. We told them
about the conditions of Negro labor in
America, about the crisis abroad, about
Al Capone and the Chicago bandits, and
the bootleggers and bankers of Broad-
way. We found that they knew, as their
comments and questions indicated, a
great deal more about America than the
average American knows about the
Soviet Union. And we learned that
their working conditions are superior to
those of American railway workers—
particularly in regard to the train port-
ers. Here, in each coach, there is a
compartment with berths where the
crew might rest. The Negro porters on
American trains have no such con-
veniences. Here, on the sleeping cars,
there are two attendants. In the U.S.A.
a single man takes care of a car, work-
ing throughout a long trip, and perhaps
managing to catch a little sleep on the
bench in the men's toilet. Our porters
depend on tips for a living, their wages
being extremely low. These things we
told the crew of the Moscow-Tashkent
express and they, in turn, sent back
through us their greetings to the Negro
railway workers of America.

So, with our many new and interest-
ing comrades of the train, the days on
the road passed quickly. First, the rich
farm lands slid by outside our windows;
stations where peasant women from the

kolkhozes sold chickens and cheese and
eggs; then the Volga at sunset, famous
old river of song and story; a day or so
later, Orenburg where Asia begins and
camels are in the streets; then the vast
reaches of the Kirghiz steppes and the
bright tip of the Aral Sea like silver
in the sun.

On the day when we passed through
the Kazakstan desert, the Fortieth Anni-
versary of Gorky's literary life was
being celebrated throughout the Union.
The Komsomol poets and the crew of
our train organized a meeting, too. At
a little station where the train stopped in
the late afternoon, we all went on to the
platform and short speeches were made
in honor of Gorky and his tremendous
work. (Even in the heart of the desert,
this writer whose words throb with the
lives of the common people, was not for-
gotten.) Nomad Kazaks, the men in
great coats of skins, the women in white
headdresses, gathered around, mingling
with the passengers. One of the young
poets spoke; then a representative of the

train crew; and someone from the sta-
tion. My speech in English was trans-
lated into Russian, and again into the
Kazak tongue. Then the meeting closed.
We sent a telegram to Comrade Gorky
from the passengers of the train, and
another from our Negro group. And
as the whistle blew, we climbed back
into our coaches, and the engine steamed
on through the desert pulling the long
train deeper into Asia. It was sunset,
and there was a great vastness of sky
over sand before the first stars came.

Late the following afternoon, we saw
a fertile oasis of water and greenery,
cotton growing and trees in fruit, then
crowds of yellow faces and bright robes
at the now frequent stations. At even-
ing we came to the big city of Tashkent,
the great center of the Soviet East.
There we were met by a workers' delega-
tion including brown Asiatics, fair-
skinned Russians, and an American
Negro engineer, Bernard Powers, from
Howard University, now helping to build
roads across Asia.

An Antidote for Racial
Prejudice

By CHARLES E. CARSON

THE origin of racial prejudice is
probably lost in antiquity. It has
existed among various races from
time immemorial, and is still with us in
its primitive virulence. We have all
seen it at work, and few of us have
been entirely free from its influence.

Comparatively few people of this
generation have made any effort to
ascertain the *cause*, and fewer still have
suggested a plausible *remedy*. It has
been generally accepted as a matter of
course. Heated discussions have ensued
between exponents of both sides, though
in most cases these discussions were
based on the emotions, rather than
scientific reasoning. Because emotional-
ism, by its very nature, dethrones rea-
son, it must be excluded as an obstacle
to a practical solution.

For centuries the human race suffered
from smallpox. No constructive effort
was made to prevent it, as it was
thought to be an expression of divine
wrath, and therefore as inevitable as
earthquake or drought. While this
erroneous belief prevailed it was im-
possible to provide a specific. After
the cause became known, medical science
was able to bring it under control, so

that a disease which once terrorized the
world is now practically conquered.

America is suffering from a plague
of racial intolerance, which, we are in-
formed, is inherent in humanity, and
that any attempt to eradicate it would be
futile. The fallacy of such reasoning is
at once apparent to any student of
sociology. For science has found that
it is not inherent, and that it can be
eradicated. A condition which has
existed for ages cannot be changed in
a day. History attests to the fact that
every great reform has cost years of
patient, constructive work. Thinking
men of all races are giving this matter
serious thought, but their efforts alone
are inadequate to the task. They must
have the co-operation of every citizen
who has a sense of justice and is willing
to do his or her part. Your sympathy
for the cause is not enough.

First let us determine the cause.
*Racial prejudice is not inherited; it is
acquired.* Each nation has in operation
a system of education which teaches
that the inhabitants of that country are,
in some vague way, superior to all
others. This system is now popularly
known as "nationalism". From earliest

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childhood I was impressed with the idea that America was the greatest country on earth, and American people were second to none. I was never told why; that was left for me to figure out. I am still figuring.

Narrow nationalism leads to prejudice, and prejudice leads to hatred. We saw an example of it during the late war, when the definition of patriotism was to love ourselves and hate everybody else. Prejudice against other races is equally as absurd as that against other nations. And when the race involved is a part of our American citizenry, it becomes more so.

In certain European countries this feeling is found to be at a minimum. Let us take, for example, France, where racial prejudice, as we know it, is practically non-existent. Why? Is the nature of French people fundamentally different from that of white Americans? The fact that American-born Frenchmen assume the same attitude toward the race question as the average American, refutes any such argument. Then it becomes apparent that the source is to be found in environment, and not in nature, as was formerly supposed.

In communities where racial prejudice is most intense, it has been observed that children will play together, entirely oblivious to racial distinction, until they are reprimanded by their elders and informed that it is unconventional for them to associate on an equal basis with their "inferiors". At first the child is inclined to disregard the parental admonition, and it is only after persistent exhortation that he will consent to adopt their attitude of superiority and snobbishness.

If our problem should prove to be a product of nature, we should have little hope of a solution. But since we know that it is man-made the outlook is brighter. Now that a diagnosis has been made, what shall be our method of procedure? Shall we treat the cause or effect? The question answers itself. It has been demonstrated in medical science that when the cause has been removed, the disease will cure itself. Physicians were practically helpless to cope with smallpox, once the disease had attacked it's victim. The ultimate cure came through prevention. The plague with which we are dealing, also, can be cured only by prevention, for after a patient has been infected, a cure is all but impossible.

We are provided with many avenues of education, chief of which are the home and schools. Every parent and teacher are interested in the abolition of intolerance should take advantage of these means to counteract the influence of bigotry upon the mind of the coming generation. True enough, we are battling against tremendous odds,

but in the end right will triumph over might.

Knowledge has the same power to banish ignorance that light has to dispel darkness. We have greater access to knowledge than any generation that has gone before. The schools, the press, the radio, and the pulpit are all channels through which sane knowledge may be transmitted. Every effort should be made to prevent their becoming mediums of pernicious propaganda. These agencies, when controlled by rational minds will convey to the world the basic truths that have long been neglected,

viz, that the superior person has acquired his superiority through achievement, and not by the pigment of his skin; that the Creator has placed us here to work co-operatively for a common cause, and the one who opposes his fellow-man causes his own defeat.

We must never resort to our adversaries' weapons. Where their work is destructive, ours must be constructive; while they appeal to the baser emotions, our appeal must be to the intellect. Thus we shall be able to accomplish by instruction what could never be done by controversy.

## "Where Can I Get Material On the Negro"

By CATHERINE ALLEN LATIMER

*The Crisis is glad to publish this article describing one of our best collections of Negro literature and art.*

IT is fitting that Harlem, with the largest Negro population in the United States should offer the best facilities for research on the life and culture of the Negro. A large collection of books in many languages on this subject is located in the heart of the community at the One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street Branch of the New York Public Library, of which Ernestine Rose is branch librarian. The third floor is devoted to the Division of Negro Literature and History, established in 1925. A group of interested persons in the community, among whom were Arthur A. Schomburg, James Weldon Johnson, Hubert H. Harrison and John Nail, was previously organized by Miss Rose to further the establishment of such a department. It was started with a small collection of rare books, difficult to replace, selected from the circulation department, and was increased to larger proportions by loans from the private libraries of J. E. Bruce, Lewis Latimer, Hubert H. Harrison, George Young, Dr. Charles Martin and Arthur A. Schomburg. Finally the private library of Mr. Schomburg was purchased by the Carnegie Corporation and presented to the New York Public Library in 1926. This collection covering the Negro over the world was made possible through the untiring efforts of

thirty odd years research and collecting by this bibliophile of Porto-Rican birth. Mr. Schomburg is now the curator of this collection.

The Division of Negro Literature and History, which includes the Schomburg Collection, is the only one of its kind in any public library and is considered the largest and rarest by and about Negroes in the country. Racial divisions similar to this one are located in the reference department of the Central Library, namely the Slavonic, Oriental and Jewish divisions. In the Webster Branch of the New York Public Library there is a very unique collection of Czecho-Slovakian literature.

The Schomburg Collection covers many phases of Negro life and culture, consisting of some 7000 books and pamphlets by and about the Negro, approximately 500 prints and rare portrait engravings of eminent historical and literary characters and about 800 manuscript letters, poems, plays and sermons of writers and prominent citizens.

Some of the rarest manuscript material is on Haiti, including the Proclamation and Address of Toussaint L'Ouverture (bearing his signature), delivered when he took command of the army in 1793; the Royal Gazette of Haiti, establishing schools in 1818 during the reign of Henri Christophe; and a passport which Toussaint L'Ouverture issued in 1801. There are two proclamations in broadside issued by Leclerc, who was Captain-General of the army of the colony of Santo Domingo in 1802. They call for the support of the French government against the revolu-