IMAGES FROM THE

JIM CROW SOUTH

With text and haikus by Richard Wright

“I was building up in me a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle. I was feeling the very thing that the state of Mississippi had spent millions of dollars to make sure that I would never feel; I was becoming more aware of the thing that the Jim Crow laws had been drafted and passed to keep out of my consciousness; I was acting on impulses that southern senators in the nation’s capital had striven to keep out of Negro life; I was beginning to dream the dreams that the state had said were wrong, that the schools had said were taboo.”

- Richard Wright in Black Boy, Chapter 7

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1.

I am nobody:A red sinking autumn sun

Took my name away.

2.

I give permissionFor this slow spring rain to soak

The violet beds.

3.

With a twitching noseA dog reads a telegram

On a wet tree trunk.

4.

Burning autumn leaves,I yearn to make the bonfire

Bigger and bigger.

5.

A sleepless spring night:Yearning for what I never had

And for what never was.