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IMAGES FROM THE JIM CROW SOUTH. With text and haikus by Richard Wright.
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IMAGES FROM THE JIM CROW SOUTH With text and haikus by Richard Wright
“I was building up in me a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle. I was feeling the very thing that the state of Mississippi had spent millions of dollars to make sure that I would never feel; I was becoming more aware of the thing that the Jim Crow laws had been drafted and passed to keep out of my consciousness; I was acting on impulses that southern senators in the nation’s capital had striven to keep out of Negro life; I was beginning to dream the dreams that the state had said were wrong, that the schools had said were taboo.” - Richard Wright in Black Boy, Chapter 7
` 1. I am nobody:A red sinking autumn sunTook my name away.
2. I give permission For this slow spring rain to soak The violet beds.
3. With a twitching nose A dog reads a telegram On a wet tree trunk.
4. Burning autumn leaves, I yearn to make the bonfire Bigger and bigger.
5. A sleepless spring night: Yearning for what I never had And for what never was.