Horn of Plenty

The Horn of Plenty

As the page 498 opens I can hear the bluesy voice of Odetta emerging out of Harlem and reaching all the way to the Statue of Liberty. I can see the dancers dancing in the clubs to the music of Dizzy, Bojangles, Duke, Eric Dolphy and Billy Strayhorn. By the end of the page, I know that we are in Harlem during the years between the late thirties and the early fifties. I know also that the pulse of America beats to the rhythm of Jazz and that Jazz is born out of African American culture. It is also obvious with the mention of certain names, that some of the nations top athletes are Black. Yet, because of the appearance of the Global Trotters, I can tell that while Americans are willing and eager to consume the creative fruits of African American toil, they still are not ready to share economic or social equality.

Pg. 498: Odetta is a black female singer of Ballad and Blues; Bedloes Island is where the Statue of Liberty stands; Bojangles is a Jazz entertainer who died in New York 1949; Duke, Dizzy and Eric Dolphy are Jazz entertainers; Billy Strayhorn was a jazz entertainer who moved to Harlem in 1939; the Global trotters are a Harlem basketball team who were denied acknowledgement by the NBL in 1937 because they were black; Sugar Ray was a top-notch prize fighter who won fighter of the year in 1942 and again in 1951.

As I read on to page 499, I am introduced to another side of African American life. I move with the narrator from Harlem into the suburbs to realize the American dream. Here, I feel that I have finally reached the summit and have achieved material success in spite of the odds. Yet, as a black person in a white community, I am not accepted fully. I am asked, yet while standing ´´on my patio, where did I get my money?¨ How is it, they wonder, how a black person could achieve the same success, when all they have done is throw obstacles in my path.

On page 500, a dialogue begins between the narrator and the white suburbanites. They are familiar with the names of other famous African Americans. For example, Charlie Migans, and Richard Wright. Yet, they seem clueless to the racial reasons behind Wrights expatriotism. The dialogue seems to say that the white populous of the suburbs are ignorant to the problems that the black narrator has faced. Is this ignorance genuine or a product of connivance and embarrassment ? As page 500 continues, the narrator speaks of living in the suburbs as ´living in the shadow of the negroes´´. This must be a reference to the conclusion of the complete work, when Hughes speaks about the marginalization that the African Americans feel, and he questions what will happen to an America that lacks such a central understanding of itself. By this, I take him to mean that African Americans form such a large part of American culture and that the power populace of America refuses to acknowledge the significant contribution. In so much, the black culture lives in the ´´shadows´´ around the events that transpire in the United States. So, to speak about living in the suburbs as ¨living in the shadows of the negroes,´ I take him to mean, the Americans who lives in the shadow of its true roots.

Pg. 500: Charlie Migans was a Jazz composer who lived in New York during the 1950s and played with the likes of Charlie Parker; Richard Wright was a black poet and alsow a member of the Communist party. He moved to New York in 1937, but encountered too much racism, so he moved to Paris where he stayed until his death in 1947. His works include The Native Sun and Uncle Tom’s Children.

On page 502, we see a further complication which involves the efforts toward a better life and the inevitable assimilation of blacks into the overwhelmingly white consumer structure. Not everyone can afford the style of life that they are seeking, yet it is the dream of a more peaceful and bountiful life that drives them into debt, that it to say into a new form of slavery. This new world, filled with shiny consumer goods and lots of greenery is also filled with white Christian, conservative doctrine (sermon on the mount and George Sokolsky). Yet, the narrator has not lost the memory of his roots. This is obvious in the last line, when he is asked for a reference for a maid. The last line, ´´Your mamma´´ sends us, the reader tumbling from the borrowed heights of suburban commerce and lands us back in the Jazzy blue haze of Harlem.

Pg. 502: The sermon on the mount is written in the book of Matthew in the bible and is said to be a sermon given by Jesus as a divine presentation of Christian Discipleship; George Sokolsky was a conservative columnist during the McCarthy era.