Langston Hughes on a 1930s book tour in the south. “White authors and lecturers on a similar tour could always take refuge at a hotel after a program.” But Jim Crow laws barred African Americans authors from segregated hotels. As result black speakers “were at the mercy of private hosts in private homes from whom there was no escape.” He explains, “Southerners are great ones for hospitality. Warm and amiable and friendly as it was, I was nevertheless almost killed by entertainment, drowned by punch, gorged on food, and worn out with handshaking.” He concludes, “I must have eaten at least a thousand chickens that winter.”
