“...Me, I do not want to go to no suburbans not even Brooklyn. But Joyce wants to integrate. She says America has got two cultures, which should not he divided as they now is, so let's leave Harlem." "Don't you agree that Joyce is right?" "White is right," said Simple, "so I have always heard. But I never did believe it. White folks do so much wrong! Not only do they mistreat me, but they mistreats themselves. Right now, all they got their minds on is shooting off rockets and sending up atom bombs and poisoning the air and fighting wars and Jim Crowing the universe." "Why do you say 'Jim Crowing the universe'?" "Because I have not heard tell of no Negro astronaughts nowhere in space yet. This is serious, because if one of them white Southerners gets to the moon first, COLORED NOT ADMITTED signs will go up all over heaven as sure as God made little green apples, and Dixiecrats will be asking the man in the moon, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a Nigra?' Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. will have to go to the Supreme Court, as usual, to get an edict for Negroes to even set foot on the moon. By that time, Roy Wilkins will be too old to make the trip, and me, too." "But perhaps the Freedom Riders will go into orbit on their own," I said. "Or Harlem might vote Adam Powell into the Moon Congress.'' "One thing I know," said Simple, "is that Martin Luther King will pray himself up there. The moon must be a halfway stop on the way to Glory, and King will probably be arrested. I wonder if them Southerners will take police dogs to the moon?”
Quote by Langston Hughes
Book:The Return of Simple
Work
The Return of Simple
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
“Begin with courage, not perfection. What is required is not perfection, but the courage to begin.”
Source: The Light in the Heart
Source: Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
“Jim Crow wasn't nothing but slavery, wrapped up in a nice little gift card." -Rev. John Kennard”
Source: Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South
Source: The New Jim Crow: Young Readers’ Edition: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Source: A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom
Source: Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era
Source: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Source: The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
Source: Turn The Tables
Source: Why I Left America and Other Essays
