“I said, ‘Lady, I am scared of you because you are white.’ I went on down the street, but I kept wishing I was blacker—so I could of scared that lady to death. So help me, I did. Imagine somebody talking about they is scared of me because I am black! I got more reason to be scared of white folks than they have of me.”

“Right,” I said.

“The white race drug me over here from Africa, slaved me, freed me, lynched me, starved me during the depression, Jim Crowed me during the war—then they come talking about they is scared of me! Which is why I am glad I have got one spot to call my own where I hold sway—Harlem. Harlem, where I can thumb my nose at the world!”

“You talk just like a Negro nationalist,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Someone who wants Negroes to be on top.”

“When everybody else keeps me on the bottom, I don’t see why I shouldn’t want to be on top. I will, too, someday.”

“That’s the spirit that causes wars,” I said.

“I would not mind a war if I could win it. White folks fight, lynch, and enjoy themselves.”

There you go,” I said. That old race-against-race jargon. There’ll never be peace that way. The world tomorrow ought to be a world where everybody gets along together. The least we can do is extend a friendly hand.”

“Every time I extend my hand I get put back in my place. You know them poetries about the black cat that tried to be friendly with the white one:

“The black cat said to the white cat,

‘Let’s sport around the town.’

The white cat said to the black cat,

‘You better set your black self down!’”

“Unfriendliness of that nature should not exist,” I said. “Folks ought to live like neighbors.”

“You’re talking about what ought to be. But as long as what is is—and Georgia is Georgia—I will take Harlem for mine. At least, if trouble comes, I will have my own window to shoot from.”

“I refuse to argue with you any more,” I said. “What Harlem ought to hold out to the world from its windows is a friendly hand, not a belligerent attitude.”

“It will not be my attitude I will have out my window,” said Simple.

Simple and His Sins

Simple and His Sins

JUST as the street lights were coming on one warm Sunday evening in midsummer, I ran into my friend of the bar stools between Paddy’s and the Wishing Well. He was wiping his brow.