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    Kami Export - Langston Hughes Letter To The South 1943 (2) - 2

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    Hunter Lillard [STUDENT]
    Hughes discusses how racism negatively impacted his career opportunities in the entertainment industry. Racist attitudes in the South discouraged radio stations and sponsors from featuring black artists like Hughes, Ethel Waters, and Duke Ellington for fear of reduced product sales. Hughes also expresses frustration with racist treatment on trains, where white employees would smoke, spit, and curse in front of black women passengers. Overall, Hughes asserts that racism harms both black people and society.

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    Kami Export - Langston Hughes Letter To The South 1943 (2) - 2

    Uploaded by

    Hunter Lillard [STUDENT]
    37 views2 pages
    Hughes discusses how racism negatively impacted his career opportunities in the entertainment industry. Racist attitudes in the South discouraged radio stations and sponsors from featuring black artists like Hughes, Ethel Waters, and Duke Ellington for fear of reduced product sales. Hughes also expresses frustration with racist treatment on trains, where white employees would smoke, spit, and curse in front of black women passengers. Overall, Hughes asserts that racism harms both black people and society.

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    Kami Export - langston hughes Letter to the South 1943 (2)-2

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    Hughes discusses how racism negatively impacted his career opportunities in the entertainment industry. Racist attitudes in the South discouraged radio stations and sponsors from featuring black artists like Hughes, Ethel Waters, and Duke Ellington for fear of reduced product sales. Hughes also expresses frustration with racist treatment on trains, where white employees would smoke, spit, and curse in front of black women passengers. Overall, Hughes asserts that racism harms both black people and society.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    37 views2 pages

    Kami Export - Langston Hughes Letter To The South 1943 (2) - 2

    Uploaded by

    Hunter Lillard [STUDENT]
    Hughes discusses how racism negatively impacted his career opportunities in the entertainment industry. Racist attitudes in the South discouraged radio stations and sponsors from featuring black artists like Hughes, Ethel Waters, and Duke Ellington for fear of reduced product sales. Hughes also expresses frustration with racist treatment on trains, where white employees would smoke, spit, and curse in front of black women passengers. Overall, Hughes asserts that racism harms both black people and society.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    wanting to work beside a Negro up to Jersey and Detroit and even

    etry and song lyrics. But he was also an editorialist. In 1942, Hughes was in-
    Seattle, Washington. You start anti-Negro strikes and riots. You
    vited to contribute a regular column to the Chicago Defender, a leading black
    hold back liberal employers, and keep liberal unions from permit-
    weekly newspaper. Through the 1960s, black news circulated through papers
    ting me to have jobs that I might otherwise have. I have a hard
    like the Pittsburgh Courier, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the
    enough time getting a job, without you gumming up the works from
    Chicago Defender, which connected disparate Urican American communi-
    Hollywood to Hoboken.
    ties andfostered a sense of comradeship.As Hughes remembered, 'As a child in
    I tell you, you are really a problem to me. Still being personal, I,
    Kansas I grew up on the Chicago Defender and it awakened me in myyouth
    as a writer, might have had many scripts performed on the radio if
    to the Problems which I and my race had to face in America. Its flaming head-
    it were not for you. The radio stations look at a script about Negro
    lines and indignant editorials did a great deal to make me the 'race man' which
    life that I write and tell me, "Well, you see, our programs are heard
    I later became, as expressed in my own attitudes and in my uniting. In his
    down South, and the South might not like this." You keep big Ne-
    own columnsfor the Defender, Hughes narrowed his sights on the jim Crow
    gro stars like Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington off commercial pro-
    grams, because the sponsors are afraid the South might not buy
    lln Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essgys on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942—62, ed.
    Christopher C. De Santis (Urbana, 1995), 13—14. their products if Negro artists appear regularly on their series.
    go to the diner to eat when I get hungry. I do not like the white

    baggage-car men and the news butchers and the conductors and
    any other train employees sitting in whatever extra space there may
    be in my Jim Crow car, smoking, spitting, and cussing in front of
    colored ladies.

    Post-War Problem
    YES, SAID LADIES! I know you say "colored women" down
    I
    your way. And I know you never address a colored man as Mr.—
    which I think is stupid. And I know you take pride in being just as
    rude and ill-bred as you can be to Negroes in public places. But I

    do not care so much about your manners as I care about you. Dear
    Southern White Folks, you are cutting off your nose to spite your
    face.

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