Frankie and Johnny were lovers, O lordy how they could love, Swore to be true to each other, true as the stars above;... He was her man but he done her wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Frankie threw back her kimono, she took out her forty-four. Root-a-toot-toot, three times she shot, right through that hardwo...od door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa.... We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bo...ught them; white people changed their names ... my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Except for the beast fables, which are anciently derived from the world's multi-racial heritage, American Negro humor is rooted in... social oppression. And--again excepting the animal fables--it differs from classical Western and white American humor in another respect. It is totally devoid of those myth-making and myth-transmuting elements and symbols that appeal so deeply to the American mind in the works of the tall-tale tellers such as Davy Crockett, Seba Smith, Mike Fink, and Mark Twain. There are no Rip Van Winkles, Johnny Appleseeds, Paul Bunyans, or Calamity Janes--and none bearing the faintest resemblance to them--in Negro American humor. The myth-making figures in the literature of black Americans are the blues-haunted characters. They are Stagolee, John Henry, and Big Boy; they are Mary Lou, Frankie, and Sister Caroline. And they are not funny, least of all to the nameless hundreds of folk-Negroes who created them and the still-living thousands who love them and perpetuate them in song and story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our presidents have been getting to be synthetic monsters, the work of a hundred ghost- writers and press agents so that it is get...ting harder and harder to discover the line between the man and the institution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I dont think there is anything on earth more wonderful than those wistful incomplete friendships one makes now and then in an hour...'s talk. You never see the people again, but the lingering sense of their presence in the world is like the glow of an unseen city at night--makes you feel the teemingness of it all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Isn't it curious how completely ignorant we all are of the most important part of our bodily mechanism. It is really criminal. Yet... there is no nation in the world that doesnt surround sex with fantastic walls. Of course ours are sillier than any--but not much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Gospel of the army is cunning, as of all other human activities. The wisdom of the snake under the meekness of the sheep is wh...at wins out. The first Commandment is--never let them get anything on you-- The second: Graft--get privileges others haven't got--worm yourself into confidence The Third--seem neat and prosperous--as if you had money in the bank--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »