PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

HUGHES

## Haircuts In Paris And
Pig Feet In Harlem

"If I had ever been to Paris," said Simple, "I would like to go there one more time once."

"How do you know you would, since you have never been in France?" I asked.

"I know I would," said Simple, "because a friend of mine just came back to New York and told me all about it. He is as dark as me, real colored in complexion, and he said in Paris for the first time in his life, he felt like a man."

"I do not see why a Negro has to go all the way to Paris to feel like a man," I said.

"Some do and some don't" said Simple. "Me, I feel like a man inside myself wherever I be. But some folks are not made like that. Some black men do not feel like men when they are surrounded by white folks who look at them like as if blackness was bad manners or something. It is not bad manners to be black, any more than it is good manners to be white."

"God knows, God made both of us, me and them. But white folks in the USA has got the upper hand—the whip hand—which they have been had since the days of slavery. White folks still have a million and one ways in this centennial year of keeping a Negro from feeling like a man—especially if he is a weak Negro like my friend what won the sweepstakes ticket. He took his money and went to Paris and stayed a year and for the first time he felt like a man."

"Me, in Paris, I would feel like two men. That is why I want to go, and return, and go again."

### Only In America

"To get some corn bread and pigs feet and greens," said Simple, "which is what my friend said he missed so much in Paris. Also to see Jackie Mabley and Pigmeat Markham and Nipsey Russell at the Apollo, and to hear the Caravans sing gospel songs there one more time, also Edna Gallmon Cook who I love. Then I would return to Paris and stay another year. My friend, John Williams, traveled allover Europe on his sweepstakes money—France and Italy and Spain. He says the wonderful thing about Europe is a Negro can get his hair cut anywhere."

"That is certainly not true in the USA where a Negro has to look for a colored barbershop—just like in most towns down South he still has to look for a colored restaurant in which to eat, a colored hospital in which to die, and a colored undertaker to get buried by, also a colored cemetery to be buried in. They has no such jackassery in Europe."

"What?" I said.

"White folks are not jackasses in Europe," said Simple. "In Europe, my friend tells me, they accept colored peoples as human beings. Therefore Negroes can get their hair cut anywhere in any barbershop in Paris, France, or Rome, Italy, or Madrid, Spain. Also Negroes can get shaved. Here in the United States to get shaved a white barber is liable to cut a colored man's throat instead of trimming his heard. I have never heard tell of no sit-ins in no barber chairs in America. Have you? It would take a brave student to sit-in at a white barbershop in Memphis, Jackson, Toogaloo, Birmingham, Atlanta, or anywhere else."

### With Love In His Heart

"Did you say non-violent? With all the love he has got in his heart, I have never read in no newspaper yet where Rev. Martin Luther King has gone into a white barber shop down South and said, 'I love you, barber. Cut my hair.' Martin Luther King has got more sense than that. He knows prayer might not prevail in no white barber shop in Birmingham. Or in Boston, either."

"You are right," I said. "My dentist's son, colored, goes to a small college in Ohio in a small town. There are only a handful of colored folks there. This young student has to travel forty miles to Toledo to get his hair cut. The white barbershops near the college will not serve him. They politely claim they do not know how to cut colored hair."

"If white Americans can learn to how to fly past Venus, go in orbit and make teles stars, it looks like to me white barbers in Ohio could learn to cut colored hair," said Simple. "But since they also might cut my throat, I prefer to go to Paris, to get my hair cut there, come home for corn bread, and return to Paris again. I wish I could win the sweepstakes," said Simple. "I wish I could go to Paris just once, so I could return another time. Even here in Harlem, I thank God for Paris barbers. Amen!"