Simple's Uncle Sam: With a New Introduction by Akiba Sullivan Harper
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Langston Hughes's most beloved character comes back to life in this extraordinary collection
Langston Hughes is best known as a poet, but he was also a prolific writer of theater, autobiography, and fiction. None of his creations won the hearts and minds of his readers as did Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple." Simple speaks as an Everyman for African Americans in Uncle Sam's America. With great wit, he expounds on topics as varied as women, Gospel music, and sports heroes--but always keeps one foot planted in the realm of politics and race. In recent years, readers have been able to appreciate Simple's situational humor as well as his poignant questions about social injustice in The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple. Now they can, once again, enjoy the last of Hughes's original Simple books.
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (1902-67) was born in Joplin, Missouri, was educated at Lincoln University, and lived for most of his life in New York City. He is best known as a poet, but he also wrote novels, biography, history, plays, and children's books. Among his works are two volumes of memoirs, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander, and two collections of Simple stories, The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple.
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Simple's Uncle Sam - Langston Hughes
INTRODUCTION
Langston Hughes enjoys a solid reputation in both popular and scholarly circles of literature. Without a doubt, he deserves his fame as a poet, and he clearly played a crucial role during the celebrated Harlem Renaissance. Nevertheless, Hughes continued writing far beyond anyone’s definition of the Renaissance period, and in nearly every conceivable genre. Like his poetry, Hughes’s works in theater, children’s literature, folklore, autobiography, and short fiction have garnered critical attention and popularity. In short fiction, none of his characters captured the hearts and minds of readers as did Jesse B. Semple, better known as Simple.
Langston Hughes was already established as a poet of the people when he began a column in the Chicago Defender in 1942. The weekly newspaper was one of the most popular African American papers in the nation, and World War II carried it around the world. In an effort to help his audience share his own view of global events, in 1943 Hughes created Jesse B. Semple to express the views of ordinary black men. Through Simple, Hughes strove to eradicate parochial thinking and to help all his readers appreciate why they needed to overlook temporarily the racial segregation of the U.S. armed services in order to combat Hitler—a greater and more immediate force of evil than Jim Crow. Hughes soon learned that Simple struck a familiar note with the readers of the Defender. Fans celebrated Simple’s voice, advised him about women, and even sent gifts to Simple and his lady friends.
The character developed into the dominant voice in many of Hughes’s columns through the 1940s. Hughes’s editorial wisdom shrank to a mostly anonymous foil. Increasingly, he spoke through Simple. This was not a departure for Hughes, for in his poetry he had demonstrated a gift for capturing the voices of many speakers, very much in the tradition of Walt Whitman or Paul Laurence Dunbar. His first volume of short stories, The Ways of White Folks, had pointed out the puzzling behaviors of whites. His social commentaries had revealed the foolish cruelties of American capitalism, at home and abroad. And Hughes had sought from his youth to make a living for himself as a writer, a writer who could reach audiences of many races both during and beyond the age of the creation of his works.
The Simple stories gave Hughes his first assurance of a black audience, thereby allowing him to address his favorite topics to his favorite audience. Yet Hughes labored for years to craft Simple into a character who could touch readers beyond the black press. He captured that wider audience when he published the columns in book form—Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes a Wife (1953), and Simple Stakes a Claim (1957). Hughes also used the columns as the basis of his 1957 musical, Simply Heavenly. Although the musical is occasionally revived, regrettably all three of the early story collections have gone out of print. Most contemporary readers know Simple from Hughes’s omnibus collection, The Best of Simple (1961), and from the edited collection The Return of Simple (1994), which incorporates material from the out-of-print books. With this revival of Simple’s Uncle Sam (1965), Hughes’s last volume of stories, readers have an opportunity to examine Simple within a more restricted time period and to see him interact with topical events more faithfully than he does in the broader collections.
The episodes in Simple’s Uncle Sam are probably the least known of all the Simple episodes. It is the only one of Hughes’s own collections to appear after The Best of Simple, and Hughes boasted that none of the episodes had appeared in book form before. Perhaps more important, many of these episodes were originally published in the New York Post, where Hughes’s weekly column moved after he had reached an impasse with the Chicago Defender over financial arrangements in 1962. While the Defender had provided a friendly, mostly black, and very empathetic audience familiar with Hughes’s many literary accomplishments, the Post gave Hughes readers less familiar with the life and views of Simple. In fact, readers of the Post were often unfamiliar with Hughes himself.
From his replies to fan mail, we can conclude that Hughes had to explain a great deal to his Post readers—not only his own views but also the language, imagery, and allusions of Simple. Outrage about congressional lethargy or about mysterious Southern lynchings drew complaints from Post readers who wondered why Hughes never mentioned the Holocaust or other atrocities inflicted upon groups other than blacks. Other Post readers were angry young blacks who felt that Simple’s vernacular black English and his frequent use of humor signaled an offensive and intolerable Uncle Tom
attitude. Archival materials may not preserve all the fan mail from either audience, but, judging by what is housed in Yale University’s Beinecke Library and New York City’s Schomburg Center, we have to wonder if the faithful and devoted fans who followed Simple in the Defender missed the switch to the Post. Perhaps Hughes saved only those letters that focused on the friction and minimized the kudos. Or perhaps the times had become so volatile that readers of any publication would have bristled at Simple’s parochial viewpoints, grammatical errors, and penchant to laugh whenever possible. Contemporary readers can evaluate Simple’s Uncle Sam from a safe historical distance in a different political climate.
Simple’s Uncle Sam continues Hughes’s tradition of presenting Simple’s blunt assessments of the U.S. government, barbs about women, revenge fantasies about white racists, and challenges to hypocrisy. Unlike Simple Takes a Wife, this collection does not provide sequential episodes about Simple’s personal life. More like Simple Stakes a Claim, Simple’s Uncle Sam always keeps one foot in the political realm and pivots from that point.
Politically, Simple emerges somewhere between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. He recognizes and respects the accomplishments of nonviolence but also shares some of Malcolm’s disdain for all the sit-ins and marches. Declaring his own vision, Simple suggests that African American nude pose-outs (or pose-ins, for those who work inside) could accomplish more than conventional nonviolent strategies to shock America into clothing us in the garments of equality, not the rags of segregation.
However, Simple also has moments when he advocates and fantasizes about violence: Rev. Martin Luther King tries to pray prejudice out, but sometimes I think we are gonna have to flay it out.
He goes on to speculate about what might happen to the Negro’s right to vote in Mississippi if all them down-home colored folks was to rise up in one mass, imagine!
Simple’s proclivity to challenge racists reflects his own migration from Virginia to Harlem, a history detailed in earlier collections but only alluded to in Simple’s Uncle Sam. Having grown up in the South, Simple experienced firsthand both subtle and brutal manifestations of racism. Yet, having migrated first to Baltimore and finally to Harlem, Simple learned how to stretch his opportunities. Simple understands what is considered normal in the South, but he also holds that norm in contempt. Unlike blacks who remained in the South, Simple enjoys a bolder, brasher relationship with police officers and political officials. Indeed, Simple boasts about his own representative to Congress, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and engages his white boss in toe-to-toe debate about the needs and wants of Negroes, refusing to allow his boss to determine what THE Negro wants. In his dreams and fantasies, Simple reconstructs the South, reversing racial barriers, hierarchies, and financial power structures. Yet, by his own admission, Simple refuses to return to the South to tackle the actual dangerous work of Freedom Rides and voter registration drives.
In addition to questioning grim political realities, Simple expounds on social mores when he casts an eye on the women in his world. He dwells upon Joyce, his wife, who thrives on pretentious cultural events and aspires to budget their two salaries so that they can afford to buy a home in the suburbs. His domestic tranquillity is frequently shaken by his needy Cousin Minnie, who enjoys bars as much as Simple does. Another cousin, Lynn Clarisse, shares Simple’s Southern roots but is college-educated, financially secure, and culturally open-minded. Unlike any other character in the entire canon, Lynn Clarisse is a proud Freedom Rider and an active worker in the voter registration drives. Her visit to Harlem is truly understood to be a visit, because her commitment rests with her activities back home.
Contemporary readers can justifiably label Simple a sexist, as he boldly expresses many offensive and restrictive views about women. He portrays his former wife, Isabel, and his cousin Minnie as gold diggers and usurpers. He expects Joyce to have his dinner on the table each night, despite her own employment outside the home. Simple even wants to hold an Ugly Contest
every weekend, because he finds more homely womens in the world than there are pretty womens.
The total scope of the volume, however, shatters any monolithic image of black women. Joyce adores opera. Lynn Clarisse reverts to the words of Sartre in times of stress. Even Cousin Minnie becomes boldly active during the 1964 Harlem riots, and she takes a courageous stand against physical abuse in a personal relationship. These women represent a range of female viewpoints, preferences, and activities. Moreover, Simple’s sexist point of view is usually countered by his constant companion and beer buddy, Mr. Boyd.
Boyd, usually the unnamed I
with whom Simple dialogues, is actually named in several of the episodes in Simple’s Uncle Sam. This financially secure fellow frequents the same bar as Simple. The other patrons value his college education, but Boyd never flaunts it or uses it to lord over his companions. He challenges Simple’s sobriety, his sanity, and his sense, but his role in these stories is always as a foil to Simple. Although Boyd challenges Simple’s focus on race, Simple generally gains the upper hand or the last laugh. These two characters were developed to be dramatically different, but together they represent the kind of mutual respect for diverse socioeconomic factors that characterized Langston Hughes himself. Their combined attitudes epitomize the behaviors and perspectives Hughes wanted his Simple stories to advance.
While Simple dominates nearly every episode, the occasional story is carried by another character: Boyd, Cousin Minnie, or the deeply racist Colonel Cushenberry, who offers his Cracker Prayer
as he nears death. Hughes pays careful attention to distinctions in dialect, diction, grammar, and opinions, and by doing so conveys an important multiplicity of voices. Thus, what appears to be uncomplicated nonetheless functions in profound ways to challenge the status quo and suggest possibilities for change. As the beer buddy Boyd says, Simplicity can sometimes be more devious than erudition.
As in the weekly newspaper columns, the episodes in Simple’s Uncle Sam burst with references to real people, creating a graceful blend of fiction and historical footage. Comedians such as Moms Mabley, Pigmeat Markham, and Nipsey Russell, and athletes such as Cassius Clay (Muhummad Ali), Willie Mays, Casey Stengel, Jackie Robinson, and Wilt Chamberlain became part of the literary landscape. Opera singers such as Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson are mentioned, along with the pop performers Billy Eckstine, Harry Belafonte, and Frank Sinatra, and the gospel artists James Cleveland and the Dixie Hummingbirds. Actors including Nina Mae McKinney, Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, and Elizabeth Taylor all cross the stage, and works by Shakespeare and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) are cited. Literature by Whitman and Sartre, operas by Wagner and Bizet, and artistic masterpieces such as the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa become part of the environment. Simple frequently mentions Harlem’s Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., along with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson. African American organizations such as the Urban League emerge as forces of change. Indelible events such as the bombing deaths of four little girls in a Birmingham Sunday School, the lynching of Emmitt Till, and the murder of Medgar Evers become salient references.
These political and historical realities are planted in a field blooming with humor—coined words, laughable character names, and malapropisms. Who can resist a chuckle when Cousin Minnie confronts her inebriated date Rombow and conk[s] and crown[s him] both all at once,
or when Simple recalls wondering in Sunday School what kind of drawers Jesus wore beneath his flowing garments? Even the ironic characters in Simple’s dreams, like dear old Mammy Faubus,
Mammy Eastland,
and the little blue-eyed crackerninnies,
amuse those who recognize the deeply entrenched racism those names represent.
Simple’s flights of fantasy sometimes give him power and wealth. The boat whistle on his imaginary yacht would blow in B-flat, the key of the blues.
In his imagined heaven, Simple threatens those who would impose racial barriers at the golden gate: If you and Old Gov. there don’t get out of my way and let me in this gate, I will take my left wing and slap you both down.
When Simple lauds the Europeans for dropping race barriers in restaurants, hospitals, and cemeteries, he concludes, They has no such jackassery in Europe.
Just when the reader might have grown too weary of the litany of problems, Simple invents a word to lighten the moment. Situational humor, verbal incongruities, and satire all diffuse the hostility resulting from truly offensive racial restrictions.
Humor aside, Simple’s Uncle Sam also provides the poignant, timeless, and thought-provoking moments for which Hughes is better known in other genres. For example, Cousin Minnie’s heartbreaking experience with her man leads Simple to note, Some people do not have no scars on their faces,… but they has scars on their hearts.
Simple, like Hughes himself, observes the inner workings of people. Many of Simple’s fantasies of generosity echo the sentiments and actions of his creator. Whereas Simple wishes to buy a bicycle for every youth in Harlem, Hughes allowed the children to his neighborhood to garden
in the tiny plot of dirt in front of his