Sydney

** AMERICA **** ’S GREATEST CRIME: **

Once riding in Old Baltimore Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me.  Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poker out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."  I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember.

-Countee Cullen

//**"Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike."**// p.45 from Toni Morrison's //The Bluest Eye//

"It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights - if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different...If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. M aybe they'd say, 'Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We musn't do bad things in front of those eyes." p.46 from Toni Morrison's //The Bluest Eye//


 * "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." -Thomas Jefferson **



[[image:GordonParks3.jpg align="center" caption="Gordon Brown, "Farm Security Administration," 1948" link="THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE"]]


//**"People say, `How did you let somebody spit on you? How did you let all those people say those things?' **//

"We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veils...More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live - just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peels," from //The Bluest Eye//, p. 190.

"...amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery...the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendents; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its existence."

"The moderns then, after they have abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color."

-From Alexis de Tocqueville's //Democracy in America//

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">//**(What Did I do To Be So) Black and Blue**// <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">Cold, empty bed, Springs hard as lead, <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif"> Pains in my head, Feel like old Ned. What did I do    <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">To be so black and blue? <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">No joys for me, No company, Even the mouse Ran from my house, <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif"> All my life through I've been so      <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">Black and blue.

I'm so forlorn, Life's just a thorn, My heart is torn, Why was I born? What did I do to be so Black and blue?

I'm white inside, But that don't help my case. 'Cause I can't hide <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif">What is on my face, Oh!

//Lyrics by Andy Razaf//



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America's Greatest Crime Reflection