PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

LANGSTON
HUGHES

I am going back to Africa. I was there a few months ago—in Nigeria—and was fascinated. Lagos impressed me as Chicago did in my youth—big, booming, bustling, wonderful, and devil take the hindmost, with a dangerous, dramatic and I—wonder—if it's-me—will-catch—the—lucky-number expectation. A city of cash in hand. To open a shoeshine stand, pay off somebody. That somebody probably has to pay off somebody else in turn. If you want a good job, a little do-re-mi to the immediate powers—that-be. That wonderful kind of on-your-toes poker town where the biggest bluff might equal the best hand—if you can play your cards. But you had better not be a square, not in Lagos.

I have not been in Ghana since 1924, which was a long time ago. I gather from the papers that Ghana is trying to be a socialist country. That is why the powers that be got mad when a lady there bought an $8,000 bed and refused to send it back to the sellers, even though her husband lost his government job. She said, after all, it was her own money and she could buy an $8,000 bed if she wanted to. Lately I hear the lady is in Paris riding through the city in a big, long, handsome limousine with a hired taxicab employed to go before her to clear the traffic lanes. Those Paris cabbies can really clear a traffic lane. How wonderful to be able to afford an empty cab just to drive in front of one's private car to clear a lane. Oh, lovely meter uninhibited! I would like to own the cab.

In Lagos, except for their clothes, the people look just like Harlemites. The city looks like a combination of the most enticing travel folders on the tropics and Dante's "Inferno." Along the Marina or at the Federal Palace Hotel, it is really fine. It is fine almost everywhere else, too, but not in the same way. Not pretty fine, just hot, humid, hellish, warm, fleshy, crowded, colored and colorful, drum-dancing, palm-wine drinking, maybe even a littlePagoda-smoking, hemp-indulging, reefer-pulling, dreaming-of-that-lottery-number-coming-out, where-is-my-next-week's-rent kind of fine—human and dramatically fine.

I thought only people in Harlem lived in that hell-warm pulsating way, or in Legunillo's market neighborhood in Mexico City, or in Hong Kong, or the way Life pictures India. In the new African countries, honest, I thought everything was roses and sunrise and dew. So everything will be in due time, of course, but how naive can even an ancestor-worshipper like me be? My people came long ago from Africa. My people were slaves. Africa is free. How come, all of a sudden, Africa, you can't be immediately both my dream and me? You will be, and you try now, but you are much too human. Don't be like me. Don't be. Please be more than me. Be more than you. Be more than Chicago, please.

Incidentally, Chicago itself is getting better. It is cleaner by far than it was 10 years ago. No machine guns overbookie joint doors. Not such open police shakedowns as in the Thirties, the Forties. Chicago seems to have had a civic face-lifting, old surface wrinkles gone, even if the tough old muscles underneath remain. In a city like Chicago, if you want to live, be tough—and these days, be cool. If you want to live in Lagos, be tough, too. It is too hot in Lagos to be cool.

What a handsome Chase National Bank, all glass and alcooled and carpeted, in the heart of Lagos, with The New York Times available to clients. What lavish American oil offices! What Pepsi Cola installations! What Barclay Banks! What London and Kano Trading Corporations! Big business, white behind a black facade. What pound and dollar wrestling matches there will be in Lagos in due time, refereed in pidgin-English! What shakedowns! What volcanoes of coupons! What eruptions of cash in the dawn! What startled air cooling!

Langston Hughes' column will appear in this space next Friday.

NEW YORK POST, FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1962

NEW YORK POST, SENT AUGUST 13, 1962

File Copy

LANGSTON HUGHES

SIMPLE AND VACATIONS

"Where have you been so long?" I asked my friend as he stood at the bar on 125th Street with his third glass of beer. "I have not seen you in quite a time."

"I have been on my vacation," said Simple, "and as usual, I come back beat. As you heard me say before, white folks thrive on vacations, but they almost kill Negroes. When we play, we play hard. I stopped in Saratoga on the way home and had a ball."

"Where did you go on your vacation?" I asked.

"As far North as I could," declared Simple. "We went to Canada."

"What ma?"

"My wife and me and two of Joyce's friends what have a car. But I do not think I will go anywhere again with friends what have a car," said Simple. "First reason is, they always want to stop here, and you always want to stop there. You say, 'Let's stop at Howard Johnson's and eat dinner before we drive on to the next town.'"

"They say, 'But do or don't these roadside restaurants discriminate? We ain't on no Freedom Ride. This is a vacation.'"

"I say, 'You will never get a vacation from being black until you die. Let's go in and see. Is your a coward?'"

SIMPLE AND VACATIONS - 2

"Whereupon, my wife, days, 'Jess Semple, don't make things unpleasant by starting an argument.' When Joyce calls me by my full name, Jess Semple, I know she is upset. So I shut up. All I said was, 'I am not hungry myself at this moment.'

"We drive on. After awhile we come to a motel and since it was somewhat past dusk dark and time to be thinking about where to lay your head for the night, Joyce said, 'That looks like a nice place.'

"Our friends said, 'Looks like a white place. Don't you think maybe we ought to look for a colored motel?' They was a young couple, too, and surprised me, being so handkerchief headed. But I held my peace. In these days of integration, given a chance some Negroes will not even take it. So we drive on. When we got to Boston we went to a colored hotel.

"But Canada was a different story--there was no colored hotels. We stayed at white hotels up there and they was just as nice to us as they could be. Montreal is a beautiful city. Only thing is, in the dining room, our friends asked for things like pig knuckles and cabbage, and salt pork and black eyes peas in the dead of summer. They even wondered if chitterlings was on the menu. When they found out that such old down-home southern cooking was unknown in Canada, they said, 'These Canadians ain't ready for integration.'

"Most of the menus in Canada was in French, anyhow. Joyce were on her dignity and ordered all them foreign named dishes as if she knowed what they was. Me, I did not say a thing at the table, just, 'I'll eat whatever you eat, baby.' And believe me, we ate fine. The soup turned out to be soup even if it were

SIMPLE AND VACATIONS - 3

named **potage**. The meat was meat even if they did call it **fillet**.
And Coop Saint Jacks was nothing but ice cream with a little fruit
on it. I knew a demi-tasse was a half cup of coffee, so when
we come to that, all I said politely was, 'Waiter, gimme a full
cup, please.' Do you know, that waiter brought me a whole pot!

"In the mornings we had breakfast in bed, which they called
**continental**. After that, I went down stairs by myself and
had a real breakfast in the coffee shop--and I did not have to
sit-in at the counter to get it. No prejudice at all in Canada.
But there are not many Negroes up there, neither. You know, I got
homesick for Harlem.

"Joyce told me, 'You can take a Negro out of Harlem, but you
can't take Harlem out of him. Don't you enjoy gazing at the St.
Lawrence and wandering in Old French Quebec?'"

"I said, 'Baby, I wish this hotel had a juke box with some
Ray Charles records on it, else Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford--
who they don't seem to have heard of yet in Canada, but who can
whale.'"

"Joyce said, 'Can't you let your ears rest a week without
all those Harlem sounds? The reason folks go off on vacation is
to get away from what they have been around all my year.'"

"'I am happy, Joyce,' I said, 'if you is. Quebec is
Quebec. But to tell the truth, I will not mind getting back to
Lenox Avenue. The nicest thing about travelling is coming back.
Folks spend so much money getting away on vacations just to return
back where they was. The best thing about going off, baby, I will
tell the world--and I say it again--yes, the best thing about going
away is coming home.'"

--30--

50 NEW YORK POST, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1962

# Jim Crow's
## Funeral

LANGSTON HUGHES

Now, you take old Jim Crow. I have known him all my life.
I met him first when I was just a little, small child. Every
time I turn a corner, I have met him since.

I have met him down home and I have met him up North,
out West, and back East, from New Orleans to New York,
Portsmouth to Portland. He doesn't have to get around, because
he is already there, everywhere I go. I do not like Jim Crow.

Jim Crow is a low dog. Jim Crow is a skunk. Jim Crow is a buzzard. Jim Crow is a snake in the grass of democracy. Jim Crow is a wolf in Uncle Sam's clothing. He looks like a man but he ain't nothing but a varmint. Jim Crow is a disgrace to the family, but they won't disown him. (He's still white, ain't he?)

I do not like Jim Crow.

He stands in too many doors and says, "You can't come in here!" He runs too many factories and stores and things and says, "You can't work here!" He is the principal of too many schools and states, "You cannot send your children here!" He is the pastor of too many churches that say, "Nay! Here Negroes do not pray!"

He sells too many bus tickets at too many Jim Crow windows.

He puts me in too many back seats.

He is on too many registration boards, daring me to vote.

He is on too many draft boards, sending our boys to labor battalions.
He has done throwed too many rocks through my windows,
and put too many bombs under my front porches when I moved
into a house too near to him.

I do not like Jim Crow. He is old and he is dirty, devilish and mean. His breath smells bad. And his fingernails ain't clean.

He writ a letter to Hitler during the War and said, "You are all right with me because you do not like Negroes, either."

Jim Crow is sick in the head. I hear, tell he is also ailing in body, as well as in mind. Them peoples in Asia has got him worried almost as much as I got him worried. In a little while the Mau Mau is going to worry him some more. The UN bugs him. The Russians is done long ago made him mad.

He is on the verge of nervous prostitution. I wish he would break down and die.

If Jim Crow was to die—Amen!—I would preach his funeral.
From standing in the pulpit where I would be standing, I would look dead inside his face, and I would say:

Jim Crow! Jim Crow! Oh, Jim Crow!

The Lord has taken you away!

Jim Crow! Jim Crow!

You will never again drink

From no WHITE water fountain

Whilst I go dry,

Never again, Jim Crow,

Will you set up in front of buses

From Washington to New Orleans

Whilst I ride in the back over the wheels.

Never again will you, Jim Crow,

Laying here dead,

Rise up and call me out of my name.

I got you in my power now,

You dirty dog.

And I will preach you to your grave!

Ah-hhh-hhh-hhh-h! Jim Crow!

You did not know a Negro

Was going to preach your funeral, did you?

Well, I is! Me, just plain old me

Who was made in the image of God

From time eternal, yes, time eternal,

From the clay of the infinite,

Into whom was breathed the breath of life—

Just to preach your funeral, Jim Crow!

And to consign you to the dust

Where you may rest in peace

Until the world stops spinning around in the universe,

Until this old earth comes to a halt.

So all-of-a-sudden hell-fired quick

That it will fling you, me and everybody

Through the a.m. and p.m. of Judgment

WHAM to the feet of the throne of God!

God will say, "Jim Crow! Get away!"

Away! Hie yourself hence!

Make haste—and take your place in hell!"

I'm sorry, but that is what God will say, Jim Crow,

So I might as well say it first. Therefore,

It gives me great pleasure, Jim Crow,

To close your funeral with these words—

As the top is shut on your casket,

And the hearse pulls up, outside the door,

As the Dixiecrats wipe their weeping eyes,

The Klan blows its nose,

And every coach on the Southern Railroad

Is draped in mourning,

As South Africa cablegrams sympathies

Whilst the Confederate flag is at half-mast,

Barnett faints and Faubus shakes with grief,

As the pallbearers step forward

And the DAR swoons,

As they prepare to wheel you down the aisle

And on to your eternal rest,

All I can say is, Jim Crow,

GO TO HELL!