At Meridian a kindly outdated white gentleman within the viewers got here up and stated lightly, “I simply are looking to provide you with a warning that you just shouldn’t be interpreting these race-equality poems in Meridian, and you’d greater be cautious promoting your books. There are fogeys during this country who wouldn’t like what you assert. ” I knew that there have been cities in Mississippi the place Negro newspapers from the North weren't allowed to be offered overtly. proprietors needed to bootleg Negro papers containing democracy-for-all editorials, and one guy I’d met were run out of city for promoting The Chicago Defender. Mississippi used to be a kingdom the place few Negroes then dared to vote for worry of violence. In that yr, 1931, there were twelve lynchings within the South. numerous of my poems have been approximately vote casting and lynching; and that i constantly learn a few of them on every one application, in addition to one or poems in regards to the Scottsboro Case. It was once my poetry of this kind which brought on the kindly previous white guy to warn me approximately his fellow Mississippians. yet, against this, at Greenville, Mississippi, within the very middle of the levee kingdom, the top white poet of the country, Will Alexander Percy, acted because the chairman of my application at a Negro church. He brought me so much graciously to the viewers. Later he despatched me an inscribed replica of his autobiography, Lanterns at the Levee, and through the years that I had numerous attractive letters from him. yet I met under part a dozen such gentlemanly Southerners on my winter-long journey. in its place, i discovered an exceptional social and cultural gulf among the races within the South, astounding to 1 who, like myself, from the North, had by no means recognized such uncompromising prejudices. after all, a Negro traveller quickly acquired accustomed to—even if by no means capable of settle for emotionally—the many noticeable evidences of felony segregation: the WHITE and coloured indicators all over from station ready rooms to public water fountains, the Jim Crow vehicles at the trains, the coloured front placards within the alleys the place motion picture stairways led as much as the top gallery, the eating places the place Negroes couldn't devour, etc. however the unpredictable and unforeseen issues that without warning occurred are the issues I always remember. as soon as i used to be overdue for a night engagement simply because, at a river crossing the place the bridge was once less than fix, a ferry was once getting used. yet the entire Negro vehicles at the street needed to wait till the entire white autos in line, irrespective of how some distance again, had gotten at the boat. The ferry captain might fill his boat up with white autos and depart the Negro autos status there. by the point the boat crossed the river and got here again, extra white drivers had accumulated. The ferry grasp may back movement the whites onto the boat prior to the Negroes. ultimately i used to be allowed to get around the river. A much less frustrating yet extra incredible incident occurred in Savannah. In ny each Sunday, due particularly to my curiosity within the publication evaluate part, I continually received the days. It used to be no longer continuously effortless to discover a Sunday occasions within the South. yet every time i finished in a wide urban, i attempted to discover it.