I think you are a wonderful people, he announced, a perfectly wonderful people! Such verve and vivacity! Such dancing! Such singing! And I've always thought coloured people were lazy! I suppose, he added reflectively, that it's because you're all so happy. That's it, Rusk, he cried, they're all so happy!
Do you know the poems of a young coloured fellow named Langston Hughes? Baldwin demanded of Byron.
Yes, I do.
Well, I thought they were good before I came up here, but he's just a bus-boy or something like that, and he doesn't understand his race. Listen to this:
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!
Well, I thought that was good, Baldwin repeated laughing, but now I see it's only bus-boy bunk. He don't understand his race.
I should say not, McKain agreed.
I took the trouble to learn it too, Baldwin con-
