“I was not looking at no sky, as I told you in the poem. I was looking at the girls.”

“Well, anyhow, what else did you write?”

“This next one is a killer,” said Simple. “It’s serious. I got to thinking about how if I didn’t have to ride Jim Crow, I might go down home for my vacation. And I looked around me out yonder at Orchard Beach and almost everybody on that beach, besides me and Joyce, was foreigners—New York foreigners. They was speaking Italian, German, Yiddish, Spanish, Puerto Rican, and everything but English. So I got to thinking how any one of them foreigners could visit my home state down South and ride anywhere they want to on the trains—except with me. So I wrote this poem which I will now read it to you. Listen:

I wonder how it can be

That Greeks, Germans, Jews,

Italians, Mexicans,

And everybody but me

Down South can ride in the trains,

Streetcars and busses

Without any fusses.

But when I come along—

Pure American—

They got a sign up

For me to ride behind:

COLORED

My folks and my folks’ folkses

And their folkses before

Have been here 300 years or more—

Yet any foreigner from Polish to Dutch

Rides anywhere he wants to

And is not subject to such

Treatments as my fellow-men give me

In this Land of the Free.

Dixie, you ought to get wise

And be civilized!

And take down that COLORED sign

For Americans to ride behind!

Signed, Jesse B. Semple. How do you like that?”

“Did you write it yourself, or did Joyce help you?”

“Every word of it I writ myself,” said Simple. “Joyce wanted me to change folkses and say peoples, but I did not have an eraser. It would have been longer, too, but Joyce made me stop and go with her to get some hot dogs.”

“It’s long enough,” I said.

“It’s not as long as Jim Crow,” said Simple.

“You didn’t write any nature poems at all?” I asked.

“What do you mean, nature poems?”

“I mean about the great out-of-doors—the flowers, the birds, the trees, the country.”

“To tell the truth, I never was much on country,” said Simple. “I had enough of it when I was down home. Besides, in the country flies bother you, bees sting you, mosquitoes bite you, and snakes hide in the grass. No, I do not like the country—except a riverbank to fish near town.”

“It’s better than staying in the city,” I said, “and spending your money around these Harlem bars.”