I was raised in what is now the "jungle" of New York, the lower Bronx, and, indeed, at that time it was a very pleasant place. We played like all oth… - Ollie Harrington

In 1945 everyone thought that peace really meant peace. Everyone, that is, who didn't live in a ghetto, where peace means burial parlor. Newspapers were amazingly vague about the wave of lynchings sweeping the South. Reporters and police authorities seemed mystified by the number of burned, black corpses hanging in some of the choicest wooded areas, many of them castrated. The supposition was that they were put there by "anonymous persons." Even more mystifying was the fact that they were usually veterans.

With you, I, an American Negro, am deeply concerned about liberty of a man in Yugoslavia and about the rights of Jews in Europe. We care that a Chinese peasant shall have the right to till his land free from fear and want. But I ask you this-an honest question-why is there talk of Spain and Yugoslavia, of Palestine and Greece but no talk of Aiken County, South Carolina. Why so little of Isaac Woodard, a veteran whose eyes were gouged out by a policeman's club? Why do we sweep the burning fact of discrimination against 15,000,000 citizens under the carpets of America?
There are 15,000,000 Negro Americans who do not believe you, ladies and gentlemen, when you say, "justice." We have reasons to believe you mean justice for whites only.

there is something about picking up stakes and moving on that never really seems to work out. The restlessness which compels so many humans to go see what's on the other side of the hill, or river, is self-defeating. There are so many hills and so many rivers. And in the end one sits on some cold stone under an improbable tree and sings the blues.