Merry-Go-Round

The following poem by Langston Hughes was first published in 1932. Some of my closest friends were born around this time; I was born just eleven years later.

Merry-Go-Round

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can’t sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There’s a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we’re put in the back—
But there ain’t no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where’s the horse
For a kid that’s black?

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Thinking back to the era from which these words come is a remarkably sobering experience, isn’t it?

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