The Great Gatsby: What a Great Book(Cover)

I can’t get into the habit of reading e-books. In fact, I can only ready so much from a computer screen before I’m searching for the nearest print button. The idea of carrying books on an electronic device that weighs no more than two pounds, and takes up less space that the latest edition of Essence magazine sounds convenient and efficient. However, for some reason, I just can’t get with it. (And believe me, I’ve tried.) I simply need a book. What can I say? I like paper. I like to write in margins and turn pages. I even like the feel of books—so much so that I recently purchased a second copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man just because the book felt good. (I was intrigued by the soft binding and rim, and  I got a kick out of how the pages flipped through my fingers.)

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t share that I like to study book covers. Now, I understand that some e-books contain digital images; however, many do not. For me, a book’s cover is more than a picture. Book covers represent the intersections between reality and perception, as well as readers’ interpretations and writers’ intentions. They convey narratives about the historical and/or contemporary climate in which a text and/or edition was published. Lastly, book covers reflect artists’ interpretations of a narrative, and they grant insight into the themes and characters that emerge in a text.

Since 1925, many illustrations have graced the cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In an online exhibit sponsored by the Rare Books and Special Collections division at the University of South Carolina, the curator exhibited 18 images affiliated with the text. While the curator identified the time period and literary context in which the covers were produced, I found the actual illustrations interesting. Of the 18 covers, most of them included images that reflected themes addressed in the text— including displays of wealth, fashion, and romance at the turn of the 20^th century. Editions published by the Armed Services  and for “scholarly” reasons did not include images or illustrations.

Interestingly, all of the covers created for The Great Gatsby neglect to capture the essence of the text—which embraces the dichotomy and the co-dependent relationship between the wealthy and the poor. Instead, the illustrated covers reflect the vibrancy of New York City, overindulgence, wealth, and according to Thorstein Veblen, the habits of the “leisure class.” [1] While The Great Gatsby is very much about the lavish lifestyle of the wealthy, it is also about the harsh realities of the working class, and the boundaries and intersections of these two groups. The variance in illustrations and the decision to include images on the novel’s cover forced me to think about two items: (1) intended audience, and (2) the lens from which particular editions were intended to be read.

Upon reviewing The Great Gatsby and the book covers affiliated with the novel, I asked myself: “If I were to develop a cover for The Great Gatsby, or any text, how would it look? Which themes would I depict?” I found the University of South Carolina’s online exhibition most fascinating because it forced me to think about the ways museum and cultural institutions can encourage critical thinking skills beyond the objects housed in their buildings. Perhaps, incorporating everyday objects, such as books, into exhibits (or discussions about exhibits) can encourage people to think critically about the images they encounter in their daily lives, as well as the ways the themes addressed in books manifest in reality.

Book covers are not just pretty pictures. Rather, they speak volumes about texts, authors, artists, intended audience(s), and the social, political, and economic climate at the time of publication.

[1] Thorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in The American Intellectual Tradition, eds. David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 132.

The Great Gatsby: Lines of Class Traversed but not Broken

Jay Gatsby spent his entire life creating an elaborate façade to enable himself to climb the social ladder to “greatness”. Climbing the social ladder to greatness is an American dream that so many adhere to but what is the greatness that we seek, is it for us all to equally enjoy, and can it ever be truly obtained? The title of the book suggests that Gatsby had in the end realized his dream of greatness but what is this greatness that Gatsby pursued and arguably achieved? The use of color as metaphor runs throughout this book and can be used to decipher the greatness that Gatsby yearned for.

From the very beginning Gatsby is depicted as yearning for a small green light in the distance. This light is far off and while we learn throughout the book that Gatsby equates the light with Daisy it is interesting that the light is described as green and small. There is an inherent duality in the meaning associated with the color green. Green evokes thoughts of money and greed but also thoughts of life and growth. Often people subconsciously equate the two meanings as one and therefore believe that through money there is new life. We discover as the story progresses that Jay Gatsby fell into this line of thought.

Gatsby gave up his past to recreate himself as one who is socially deserving of wealth and indirectly then of the honor of being known as great and powerful. The green light is constant but only a small part of the landscape surrounding Gatsby. This light consumes Gatsby’s vision and yet Fitzgerald describes it as small. Not everyone had a green light at the end of their dock and that green light, although seen by many, was only meant for a few. It was not an all-encompassing light or even a light that was all that useful. Perhaps that little green light represented only 1% of all the light of the night sky.

The majority of America’s wealth, some argue, is held by only 1% of the total population. Power as gained through wealth can affect many things socially and politically and when that extreme power is held by the very few, the interests of the majority are easily lost. The Occupy Wall Street Movement is a social movement of this era that aims to fight the power that comes through wealth in our society.[1] Like this movement of today, Fitzgerald highlights to ultimately critique the social power through wealth model for society. Fitzgerald points out existing class distinctions and how they can be traversed, but in the end he demonstrates that the system was not broken. In the end the only people who were born to money were the only people who came away from the series of events completely untouched physically and socially. There is a strong tradition of power derived through money in America and I can not help but wonder if Fitzgerald was pessimistic or optimistic about this dynamic changing over time.

An object’s described color was not always stagnant throughout the book. The color of Gatsby’s lawn changes depending on what it is being compared to. When Nick Compares his own lawn to Gatsby’s he calls it lush and green but when Gatsby’s lawn is compared to the small green light in the distance, Nick describes Gatsby as being firmly planted on his blue lawn. This brings up the idea that everything is relative, that wealth to one or in one situation is blue or blue-collar in another.

Often there is a desire to continually strive for what one perceives as “up” socially. Fitzgerald seems to present to his readers that seeing “green” as the way to life can only result in “green” as the way of life and that this way of life is all consuming, individualistic, and the end potentially hollow. The title of the book says that Gatsby obtained greatness, but that “greatness” left him buried by a friend of three months, a man he never met, and his Father whom he physically abandoned on his quest for social greatness. I see The Great Gatsby as a warning to not allow society define what “greatness” means for you personally. The issue of class lines and class structure are still alive and relevant today, as illustrated by the Occupy Movement. The issue may seem overwhelming and all too ingrained in our society but does that make it not worth fighting to change? Perhaps the change should start with each person redefining their own concept of “climbing the social ladder to greatness”.

[1] www.occupyarchive.org

[2] Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1925).

The Great Gatsby: Debunked

Jay Gatsby is the great and mysterious driving force behind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel, The Great Gatsby. That’s a lot of “greats” for one guy. What really makes Gatsby so great? And is his greatness real or is it just a euphemism for the American dream gone wrong?
At first glance Gatsby would seem to have it all in this 1920s jazz age novel of American society. He has the big house, the great car, glittering parties, and even a plane, but we quickly learn that Gatsby is pining for his long lost love, Daisy Buchanan. A man desperately in love as so many critics have claimed [1]. I don’t buy it. It is simply the motivation for Gatsby’s greatness, which really makes him seem a little less great as his stimulus revolves around the very basic and primal need for, er, sex. Strike one against Gatsby.
Really though, no matter Gatsby’s motivation for attaining his title of “Great,” he did end up achieving what seems to be the classic American Dream of “money, wealth, and popularity” [2]. So can we honestly fault him for his love/lust-inspired motivation? Perhaps not, but we can certainly take the great-o-meter down a notch by inspecting the means to his end.
Meyer Wolfshiem, “the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919” [3]. Though never conclusively stated in the novel, we get the sense that Gatsby attained his fortune by questionable business practices instituted by a questionable businessman. Why, you ask, is this any reason to make the great-o-meter waver? Super PACs anyone? Well, it’s a question of moral character in the creation of the American Dream. It seems to me that Gatsby really lost himself as he made his life synonymous with the American dream. Strike two against Gatsby.
But when all is said and done, perhaps Gatsby’s biggest crime against his title of “The Great,” is his willingness to lie and deceive, not only to the world, but to himself also, for the sake of covering up the truth about the love of his life and his reason for obtaining greatness in the first place. Daisy Buchanan is a prime candidate for involuntary (we think) vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of an atrocious act of human indecency! The real question is whether Gatsby ignored this small incident of murder in order to continue to perpetuate the lie of perfection he created around his beloved Daisy Buchanan. Perhaps this is the part where Gatsby begins to question his own motivations and ideals…a little…maybe…not so much. It was a nice thought while it lasted. But unfortunately, strike three for Gatsby.
Normally I would go with the whole three strikes and you’re out metaphor, but Gatsby lives up to his plummeting great-o-meter and does us one better. He gets himself murdered protecting the law-abiding, anti-murdering character of his dear Daisy who has fled Long Island in search of a better life (with no murders to her name) in the great Midwest where nobody knows her. It’s one of the great things about being wealthy that Gatsby didn’t really grasp. One never has to be responsible for one’s own actions. He paid for that misstep with his life. Not so great now Gatsby.
In the end, while Gatsby was granted the title of “The Great,” it seems that the novel may well better had been dubbed “The Not-So-Great Gatsby.” But then, that might just be way too obvious for a great American novel about the great American Dream.

[1] http://classiclit.about.com/od/greatgatsbythe/fr/aa_greatgatsby.htm

[2] Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1925).

[3] Ibid.

Myrtle Wilson: For Love or Money

I have to admit, while reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, the character of Myrtle Wilson made my stomach turn a bit. Although I saw the 1974 film adaptation of the book a few years ago, the most memorable scenes for me included Myrtle. In the film and the novel, she can be seen flying off the handle, stumbling around like a lunatic, or screaming at either her husband George Wilson or her lover, Tom Buchanan. Digging a bit deeper into her character, I came to the conclusion that in using men to define herself and her value, Myrtle chose money over love.

As a 21st century-female, I am immediately turned off by the thought of a woman who defines herself by men. In the case of Myrtle Wilson, she struggled to redefine herself and her class, and escape a marriage that she believed did not reflect her place within the social hierarchy. In the novel, Myrtle is married to George Wilson, a financially unstable gas station owner and mechanic in the Valley of the Ashes. She tells her sister that although she was “crazy for him” when she met him, she did not know that he was not a “gentleman”. [1] She is disgusted by the fact that he had to borrow a suit for the wedding. When Myrtle talks about the first time she met Tom Buchanan, a married man from established wealth, she  also describes him in terms of his clothing. “He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him.” [2]  Despite the fact that Tom physically abuses her (cue the dramatically overacted, but memorable scene from the movie when Tom hits her after she repeatedly shouts Daisy’s name), Myrtle still sees him as the husband that she deserves. Poor George Wilson seems to really love Myrtle, while Tom treats her merely as an object of desire.

Photo by Christine Matthews, September 5, 2004. Wikimedia Commons

With George, she will never escape her dirty, impoverished, working-class existence. With Tom, Myrtle has access to luxury goods and high-status items that she feels reflect her proper place in society. To facilitate the affair, Tom rents an apartment for Myrtle, which she overfills with tapestried furniture depicting scenes of Versailles and gossip magazines. When in the apartment, Myrtle also changes in to an expensive cream-colored chiffon dress. When asked about her clothing change, she replies “Its just a crazy old thing. I just slip it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.” [3] Clearly, Myrtle equates the her social standing with the visible display of the goods she can acquire through her relationship with Tom.

In Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, he describes this need to show off to peers as part of the characteristics of the leisure class and conspicuous consumption. He says that in order to gain and hold the esteem of others, it is not sufficient to merely have the wealth and power. The wealth or power held needs to be put into evidence, or seen, for esteem to be awarded for possessing these things. [4]Myrtle invites friends to the apartment to show off her luxury goods, constantly talks of acquiring more things, and even says that she has to make a list so she won’t forget all the things that she wants to buy. When asked about the dress, she gives the classic “This old thing?” response, saying she wears it when she doesn’t care what she looks like.

Did Myrtle really value the wealth that Tom could give her over the love she may have once had for George? If you’ve read The Great Gatsby, this theme also comes up when it is revealed that although Daisy loved Gatsby in their youth, she did not marry him because of his lack of money. Also, why did Myrtle seem to think she was entitled to a wealthier husband, and that she had been tricked by George? She seemed to believe that she deserved more than George was capable of offering. We never get the answer to these questions, as Myrtle is struck and killed by Daisy, driving Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce, when she runs out in the street thinking that she has seen Tom with another woman.

So, in making the choice of love or money, Myrtle Wilson chose money, which didn’t work out so well for her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York, NY: Scribner, 1925), 19.

[2] F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York, NY: Scribner, 1925), 16.

[3] F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York, NY: Scribner, 1925), 19.

[4] Thorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” in The American Intellectual Tradition, eds. David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 137.

The Unexpected Nature of it All: The Legacy of Lynching in America

Before relocating from Brooklyn to upstate New York, I read and studied lots about Sanford Biggers’ upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. I read reviews about his works, and I explored interviews and videos about his methodologies, travels, and inspirations. Biggers’ exhibition was highly anticipated, and I must admit that I was disappointed to learn that I would not be around for its opening (nor would I be able to attend supplementary programs hosted by the museum). However, I am fortunate to share that I visited the city during the 2011 Thanksgiving holiday season, and I am proud to say that the first item on my agenda was to visit Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective. The exhibit was all that I’d imagined and more. However, one installation in particular left a burning impression in my mind. My mind will not let me forget Bittersweet the Fruit, 2002; and every now and then I find myself pondering on its implications and the magnitude of the design.

Most recently, I was prompted to read portions of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children, and Langston Hughes’ The Ways of White Folks. During my exploration of these texts, I was compelled to think about Biggers’ exhibition and my distinct response to Bittersweet the Fruit. The thread that binds the works of DuBois, Wright, Hughes and Biggers is their exploration of lynchings. These works build upon DuBois’ notion of “double-consciousness.” [1] And, in the words of Wright, these intellectuals investigate the “dual role every Negro must play if he wants to eat and live.” [2]

Bittersweet the Fruit featured a tree branch with a screen embedded into its subdivision. The video included a naked, Black male situated at a piano. Two headphones were attached to the tree limb. A segment of the installation’s label read: “…Shot by the artist in the summer of 1998, its creation coincided with the brutal murder, by dragging, of James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas. Grieved by the event, which shocked the nation, Biggers regarded the video as a kind of memorial to Byrd: ‘Actually my hope was to reclaim nature and the African American male’s entitlement to be in nature without the fear of torture or death.’”

Guest viewing Sanford Biggers' Bittersweet the Fruit, 2002 (Credit: Ashley Bowden)

My friend and I approach Bittersweet the Fruit. Upon placing the headphones over my ears, and settling my eyes onto the screen, I realized that there was no sound coming from my earphones. At that time, I motioned to my friend to ask if she was experiencing the same problem. To my surprise, I turned to my friend only to discover that her headphones were attached to a rope that resembled a noose. I immediately removed my headphones at which time I also noticed a noose-like rope attached to my headphone.

I was shocked. It was surreal. Lots of ideas began to rush through my mind. I pondered on the arbitrary nature of lynchings, and the unexpected nature of the act on the bodies of “death-bound-subject[s]?” [3] Was this an example of the circumstances under which a lynching would take place? One minute you’re going about your business, the next minute your life is in jeopardy. I experienced a surge of discomfort—not because I did not want to think about historical legacies, but because I had not anticipated what I’d just experienced. I wasn’t prepared. But who was? Who is?

Reading the writings of DuBois, Wright, and Hughes took me back to my interaction with Bittersweet the Fruit. My experience with the installation caused me to engage the above works with a heightened sense of sensitivity. As I reflect on the sum of my experiences and studies, I can’t help but to think about how little life was valued by the mobs that lynched Black bodies for sport. At the same time, I am confronted with the realities innocent bystander faced—whose only fault was being born of African descent.

As museum professionals, what experiences do we want our audience to have? How do we interpret culturally sensitive material? How do we tell stories that encourage people to make connections within and outside a museum’s wall? How are organic experiences created? How can they resonate in the lives of visitors long after their visit?

 

[1] W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin Group, 1989), 5.

[2] Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 12.

[3] Abdul R. JanMohamed, The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright’s Archaeology of Death (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 2.

Brutality on Display

Throughout my life, my mother has often said to me that she “won’t allow someone to cry alone in her presence.” With such a role model in my life, it’s no surprise that I grew up being a person who is acutely sensitive to the pain of those around him. It is very easy for me to see a person in pain and have an immediate and gut-wrenching reaction to it. This made reading Uncle Tom’s Children by Richard Wright and The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes difficult for me, but a valuable experience. I had always thought of Jim Crow as a terrible thing, but I had trouble understanding how emotionally terrifying it truly was. The narratives of life in the Jim Crow South, living in fear of violence for the smallest slight or none at all, affected me very deeply.

Sarah in “Long Black Song” and her tragic tale affected me gravely.[1] In the story, Sarah is watching her child at home while her husband is in town selling cotton, when a traveling salesman visits her house and eventually rapes her. I had studied Jim Crow before, and I understood how rape was used by Whites in the South, both as a tool against African American women and as an excuse for killing African American men. I had never before been able to truly understand this, however, until Richard Wright’s story engendered an emotional connection within me. This story allowed me to feel true anger and outrage over what had been allowed to occur in the nation I call home.

Art from the "Hateful Things" traveling exhibit from the Jim Crow Museum

The only other time that I was confronted with the pain and terror of living in the Jim Crow South, was on a visit during my undergrad at Central Michigan University to the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. Professor David Pilgrim, Ph.D. founded the museum and curates it today. Dr. Pilgrim is an African American man who grew up in Mobile, Alabama and has collected racist memorabilia since he was a young man. Dr. Pilgrim explains in an essay on the museum’s website that he has collected racist memorabilia because of how deeply he hates it and he decided to found the Jim Crow Museum in an effort to “use objects of intolerance to teach tolerance.”[2] The collection at the Museum is extensive and often as troubling as the stories by Richard Wright and Langston Hughes.

One thing that I have never been able to understand, and most likely never will, is the desire to collect such objects. I have read Dr. Pilgrim’s essay and I can recite why he collects such hateful things, but I don’t think I will ever be able to see an object that elicits such negative emotions within me and desire to own them. I am just thankful that there are such people out there like Dr. Pilgrim, because using these objects to teach tolerance and assure such terrible things as Jim Crow never return is far more important than avoiding the pain of revisiting such topics.

 

[1] Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children, (HarperCollins: Pymble, Australia) 2009

[2] Dr. David Pilgrim, “Why I Collect Racist Objects”, http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/menu.htm

Remembering

During the short story “Big Boy Leaves Home” by Richard Wright, the title character and his friend Bobo are on the run after shooting the white man who killed two of their friends. As they run, Bobo says to Big Boy several times, “Theys gonna lynch us.” [1] In the end, Bobo is captured, tortured, and burned at the stake, although he is not lynched. This was, however, what passed for a justice system. No trial, no questions, simply the immediate demand for retribution.

Earlier this semester, the other second year students and I sat in our exhibition class and talked about different types of exhibits. Our professor showed us examples of some of the different styles, but the one that stuck with me the most was her example of a visual exhibit. She showed us a video presentation called Without Sanctuary that left all of the class shaken. The video, which has also been made into a book, shows postcards and photographs taken of lynching in the United States. It is an extremely graphic video, and it was something that I thought about several times after the class period was over. This week, the website that hosts the video was among our assigned readings, and again I find myself unable to forget it.

This is a video that needs to be watched. It is hard to think about our own past in a negative way. We constantly hear phrases like “back in the good old days”  when people refer to the lives of their predecessors. And while we should not ignore the triumphs we have overcome, forgetting or neglecting the negative pieces of our past is a disservice that we cannot afford.

This weekend, I visited the African Burial Ground, a National Park Service site in New York City. The site is dedicated to memorializing the African Americans who were laid to rest in the 6.6 acre burial ground. [2] To me, the site was all about memory, in spite of the fact that we do not know the names of any of the people buried there. The outdoor portion of the site, the memorial, is a beautiful and reflective space that still recalls the difficulties Africans faced in America. A map on the ground recalls the triangular trade system, and does an excellent job of including not only Africa but the Caribbean as well. To me, the most poignant part of the site was mounds marking the re-interred remains. Sitting on each mound were gifts left to honor those buried there; seashells, birds of paradise, and incense. Although we do not know the names of those the individuals that rest beneath those mounds, people still take the time to honor their memory.

We cannot forget. The lynching photos are grotesque, hard to stomach, and painful. But the victims of lynching are just as important, just as in need of memorializing as those who died and were buried in New York City. Forgetting, or neglecting to remember, simply because it is distasteful to discuss, makes us easy prey to erase what has happened, and puts us at greater risk for repeating the negative lessons that history has already taught us.

[1] Wright, Richard. “Big Boy Leaves Home” in Uncle Tom’s Children. New York: Harper Collins, 2009.

[2] National Park Service. “African Burial Ground.” http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm. Accessed February 14, 2012.

How Long Does it Take to Make Change?

In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old boy named Emmett Till went to visit his cousin Simeon Wright in Money, Mississippi.  Emmett Till was African American.  One day during the visit, the two boys ventured to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, when Emmett decided to whistle at Carolyn Bryant, the white store clerk who owned the store along with her husband, Roy Bryant.  That night Roy Bryant showed up at Simeon Wright’s house with his half-brother, and dragged Emmett from his bed.  Emmett was beaten, shot, and dumped into the Tallahatchie River.  A seventy-five pound gin fan had been tied to his neck with barbed wire. [1]

The lynching of Emmett Till took place ninety years after the end of the Civil War and twenty-one years after Langston Hughes wrote The Ways of White Folks.  Given that lynching continued to be a major problem in the United States more than a century after the Civil War, I ask my audience this, how long does it take to make change?

Langston Hughes was a social activist during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.  He used his literary abilities to showcase race relations between blacks and whites during that time period.  In “Home,” Roy Williams, an African American, journeys back home to the South after spending many years abroad.  In Europe, Williams was a well-off and respected musician who was treated as an equal among white Europeans.  The European mannerisms he learned while away from home would eventually lead to his death.  As shown by the tragic death of Emmett Till, race relations in the South were tense; the slightest wrong movement could provoke a lynching.  Such was true for Roy Williams whose casual conversation about music with a white woman led to his being beaten to death and hung from a tree.  Because he had been treated as an equal in Europe, Williams forgot about the dangers of living in the South.  Talking to a white woman was socially acceptable in Europe but fatalistic in America. [2]

“Father and Son,” another story published within The Ways of White Folks tells of the relationship between a white sharecrop owner and the Negro son he refused to acknowledge.  Like Roy Williams in “Home,” Bert Lewis’ mannerisms led to his downfall.  Lewis believed he should not be treated any differently because he was black; he demanded respect from the postal clerk, the black sharecroppers, the white men in the town, and above all, his father.  Lewis’ quest to be recognized as Colonel Thomas Norwood’s son ends with him shooting his father, and eventually, himself.  Norwood’s refusal to acknowledge his son is another example of how strongly divided race relations were in the South.  Acknowledging Bert would have lessened Norwood’s standing in the white community.  The story ends with a newspaper report about the death of Norwood and two of his sons.  The story states, “It’d be a hell of a lot better lynching a live nigger…” [3]

Langston Hughes used his writings to bring the current status of race relations in the United States to the attention of the American people.  However, despite his efforts, lynchings and intense racial tensions continued to exist even after the outbreak and conclusion of the Second World War.  Not until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s were the Jim Crow Laws abolished, and lynchings strictly punished by law.

Today, in the year 2012, how much has changed—since Langston Hughes came out with the stories in The Ways of White Folks, since Emmett Till was lynched, since the Civil Rights Movement?  How can we, as Americans, make our country an equal and safe place for all?

[1] Benson, Christopher, “Eyewitness Account:  Emmett Till’s cousin Simeon Wright seeks to set the record straight,” Chicago Magazine, January 2010.

[2] Hughes, Langston, “Home,” The Ways of White Folks (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), 33-49.

[3] Hughes Langston, “Father and Son,” The Ways of White Folks (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1933), 207-255.