“Of course I am not talking about myself,” said Simple, draining his glass. “I have never been nowhere near news except when I was in the Harlem Riots. Then the papers did not mention me by name. They just said ‘mob.’ I were a part of the mob. When the Mayor’s Committee report come out, they said I were ‘frustrated.’ Which is true, I were. It is very hard for a Negro like me to get his name in the news, the reason being that white folks do not let us nowhere near news in the first place. For example, take all these graft investigations that’s been going on in Brooklyn and New York every other week, unions and docks, cops and bookies, and million-dollar handouts. Do you read about any Negroes being mixed up in them, getting even a hundred dollars of them millions, or being called up before the grand jury? You do not. White folks are just rolling in graft! But where are the Negroes? Nowhere near the news. Irish names, Italian names, Jewish names, all kinds of names in the headlines every time Judge Liebowitz opens his mouth. Do you read any colored names? The grand jury don’t even bother to investigate Harlem. There has never been a million dollars’ worth of graft in Harlem in all the years since the Indians sold Manhattan for a handful of beads. Indians and Negroes don’t get nowhere near graft, neither into much news. Find me some Negro news in tonight’s News.”

“I would hardly wish to get into the papers if I had to make news by way of graft,” I said. “There is nothing about graft of which any race can be proud.”

“Our race could do right well with some of that big money, though,” said Simple, signaling the barman for another beer. “But it does not have to be graft, in unions or out. I am just using that as an example. Take anything else on the front pages. Take flying saucers in the sky. Everybody but a Negro has seen one. If a Negro did see a flying saucer, I bet the papers wouldn’t report it. They probably don’t even let flying saucers fly over Harlem, just to keep Negroes from seeing them. This morning in the subway I read where Carl Krubelewski had seen a flying saucer, also Ralph Curio saw one. And way up in Massachusetts a while back, Henry Armpriester seen one. Have you ever read about Roosevelt Johnson or Ralph Butler or Carl Jenkins or anybody that sounded like a Negro seeing one? I did not. Has a flying saucer ever passed over Lenox Avenue? Nary one! Not even Daddy Grace has glimpsed one, neither Mother Horne, nor Adam Powell. Negroes can’t get on the front page no kind of way. We can’t even see a flying saucer.”