Ride, Red, Ride

“Ride Red, Ride”

is a reference to Henry ‘Red’ Allen, one of the greatest jazz trumpeters and singers to come out of New Orleans.
http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com

Line 2, “When the role is called up yonder” I leave room for interpretation. Given the references that follow in the poem it’s difficult to deny the spiritual implications… ‘up yonder’ as in heaven, a gathering of histories. There is also a fragment of the dream that closes the Cultural Exchange section that carries through to this.

Line 7, “Ca Ira! Ca Ira!” … “les aristocrats a la lanterne” is the refrain to a song from the French Revolution. “It shall go on, it shall go on, [hang] the aristocrats to the lantern.”
Alone, “IRA!” also implies anger, fury. (Webster’s Dictionary 1913).

Line 8 “IRA! BOY, IRA!” has the intensity of light, enlightenment, anger into energy, TURN ON!

The Spanish in the second stanza translates roughly to “Grandmother (Abuela), where are you? (donde esta).”

Line 12, “lost in Castro’s beard” Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959 after leading a revolution against Batista.

Line 14, “blown sky high by Mont Pelee?”
Mt. Pelee, located on the island of Martinique, is famous for the May 8, 1902 eruption which killed 29,000 people and destroyed the city of St. Pierre. This is the largest number of casualties for a volcanic eruption this century.
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_mt_pelee.html

Line 16, “was she fleeing with Lumumba?” Patrice Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was deposed by Mobutu Sese Seko in 1960 and executed in 1961. New reports have shown the CIA and the Belgian government to share responsibility for his death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba

Line 17 throws me off a bit. The history of the events that are behind the specific names Hughes mentions here is staggering. In other words, I don’t know which side is which.
And the next line, “A little rum with sugar” could possibly imply a lament for the Caribbean, a loyalty to… this takes some digging!

No luck yet on Morena (line 18).

Grenadine: A chain of islands off the coast of Venezuela. Also a red syrup made from pomegranates.
Granada: was first settled by native tribes in the prehistoric period, and was known as Ilbyr.
When the Romans colonised southern Spain, they built their own city here and called it Illibris. The Arabs, invading the peninsula in the 8th century, gave it its current name of Granada. It was the last Muslim city to fall to the Christians in 1492, at the hands of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon.
http://www.andalucia.com/cities/granada.htm

I’m not quite sure how to translate line 20. I think it has something to do with drops of blood.
Adam Powell, mentioned in the last stanza, was the first person to represent Harlem in Council. His career seems to have ended rather tragically.

Overall, there is an urgency about this poem to acknowledge the past and to be proud instead of silent, to be angry instead of silent, to be curious, to become part of the legacy; “When they ask if you knew me,/ don’t take the Fifth Amendment.”