wanting to work beside a Negro up to Jersey and Detroit and even

etry and song lyrics. But he was also an editorialist. In 1942, Hughes was in-
Seattle, Washington. You start anti-Negro strikes and riots. You
vited to contribute a regular column to the Chicago Defender, a leading black
hold back liberal employers, and keep liberal unions from permit-
weekly newspaper. Through the 1960s, black news circulated through papers
ting me to have jobs that I might otherwise have. I have a hard
like the Pittsburgh Courier, the Baltimore Afro-American, and the
enough time getting a job, without you gumming up the works from
Chicago Defender, which connected disparate Urican American communi-
Hollywood to Hoboken.
ties andfostered a sense of comradeship.As Hughes remembered, 'As a child in
I tell you, you are really a problem to me. Still being personal, I,
Kansas I grew up on the Chicago Defender and it awakened me in myyouth
as a writer, might have had many scripts performed on the radio if
to the Problems which I and my race had to face in America. Its flaming head-
it were not for you. The radio stations look at a script about Negro
lines and indignant editorials did a great deal to make me the 'race man' which
life that I write and tell me, "Well, you see, our programs are heard
I later became, as expressed in my own attitudes and in my uniting. In his
down South, and the South might not like this." You keep big Ne-
own columnsfor the Defender, Hughes narrowed his sights on the jim Crow
gro stars like Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington off commercial pro-
grams, because the sponsors are afraid the South might not buy
lln Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essgys on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942—62, ed.
Christopher C. De Santis (Urbana, 1995), 13—14. their products if Negro artists appear regularly on their series.
go to the diner to eat when I get hungry. I do not like the white

baggage-car men and the news butchers and the conductors and
any other train employees sitting in whatever extra space there may
be in my Jim Crow car, smoking, spitting, and cussing in front of
colored ladies.

Post-War Problem
YES, SAID LADIES! I know you say "colored women" down
I
your way. And I know you never address a colored man as Mr.—
which I think is stupid. And I know you take pride in being just as
rude and ill-bred as you can be to Negroes in public places. But I

do not care so much about your manners as I care about you. Dear
Southern White Folks, you are cutting off your nose to spite your
face.