Langston Hughes - The Gun

Picture yourself a lone bird in a cage with monkeys, or the sole cat in a kennel full of dogs. Even if the dogs became accustomed to you, they wouldn’t make the best of playmates; nor could you, being a cat, mate with them, being dogs. Although, in the little town of Fall Rock, Montana, the barriers were less natural than artificial (entirely man-made barriers, in fact), nevertheless, to be the only Negro child in this small white city made you a stranger in a strange world; an outcast in the house where you lived; a part of it all by necessity, and yet no part at all.

Flora Belle Yates, as a child, used to shield herself from the frequent hurts and insults of white children with tears, blows, and sometimes curses. Even with only one Negro family, the Yatcses, in Tall Rock, race relations were not too good. Her father and mother had come up from Texas years ago. Flora BelIe had heard them tell about the night they left Texarkana, looking back to see their hut in flames and a mob shouting in the darkness. The mob wanted to lynch Flora Belle’s father. It seemed that, in an argument about wages, he had beaten up a white man. Through some miracle, her mother said, they had gotten away in the face of the mob, escaping in a rickety ford, crossing the state line and driving for three days, somehow making it to the Northwest. Her father had an idea of getting to Canada, fleeing like the slaves in slave days clean out of the United States, but gas and money ran out. He and his wife stopped to work along the way, and finally ended up by staying in Tall Rock. Nora’s father had gotten a job there, tending to the horses and equipment of a big contractor. Her mother worked in the contractor’s house as cook, maid, and washwoman. Shortly after their arrival, Flora Belle was born in a large room over the contractor’s stable.

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Book Choice: The Ways of White Folks: Stories

Langston Hughes - Thank You M' am

She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, intsead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.
After that the woman said, "Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here." She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, "Now ain’t you ashamed of yourself?"
Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, "Yes’m."
The woman said, "What did you want to do it for?"
The boy said, "I didn’t aim to."
She said, "You a lie!"
By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching.
"If I turn you loose, will you run?" asked the woman.
"Yes’m," said the boy.
"Then I won’t turn you loose," said the woman. She did not release him.
"I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry," whispered the boy.
"Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got nobody home to tell you to wash your face?"
"No’m," said the boy.
"Then it will get washed this evening," said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the frightened boy behind her.

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