Bibliography
Clifford, Carrie Williams, and Carrie Law Morgan Figgs.
Writings of Carrie Williams Clifford and Carrie Law
Morgan Figgs with an introduction by P. Jane Splawn.
New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1997.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem’s Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900–1950.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Finding a Way OutRobert Russa Moton
(1920)
Published in 1920, the autobiography of Robert
Russa Moton (1867–1940), a successful graduate
of Hampton Institute, and winner of both the
HARMONFOUNDATIONAWARD, in 1930, and the
SPINGARNMEDAL, in 1932. Moton returned to
Hampton in 1890 and served as a commandant for
25 years before moving to TUSKEGEEINSTITUTE,
where he succeeded BOOKERT. WASHINGTONas
president and principal. He published two addi-
tional works, What the Negro Thinks(1929) and, as
commission chair, a Report of the United States
Commission on Education in Haiti, October 1, 1930.
Moton hoped that his autobiography, which
began with stories of his African great grandpar-
ents and their abduction into slavery, would “en-
courag[e] any member of my race to greater faith
in himself, as well as in other selves, both white
and black; and shall help him to make his life
count for the very most in meeting and solving the
great human problem which we in this country call
the ‘race problem.’” He also hoped that accounts
of his exhaustive work as a civil rights advocate
and race representative, commissioned by the fed-
eral government to investigate race-related mat-
ters ranging from experiences of black troops
abroad in World War I to prospects of education in
Haiti, would encourage black and white youth to
work for “securing justice and a fair opportunity for
the humblest American citizen, whatever his race
or colour” (vii).
Bibliography
James, Felix. “Robert Russa Moton and the Whispering
Gallery after World War I,” Journal of Negro History
62, no. 3 (1977): 235–242.
Matthews, Carl S. “The Decline of the Tuskegee Ma-
chine, 1915–1925: The Abdication of Political
Power.” South Atlantic Quarterly75, no. 4 (1976):
460–469.
Moton, Robert Russa. Finding a Way Out: An Autobiogra-
phy.New York: Negro Universities Press, c. 1920
(1969 printing).
———. Report of the United States Commission on Educa-
tion in Haiti, October 1, 1930.Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1931.
———. What the Negro Thinks.New York: Doubleday,
Doran and Company, Inc., 1929.
Pamphile, Leon D. “America’s Policy-Making in Haitian
Education, 1915–1934.” Journal of Negro Education
54, no. 1 (1985): 99–108.Fine Clothes to the JewLangston Hughes
(1927)
In 1927, poet LANGSTONHUGHES, a student at
LINCOLNUNIVERSITY, completed his second col-
lection of poems. It appeared one year after the
publication of THEWEARYBLUES,his first volume
of poems. Hughes dedicated Fine Clothesto CARL
VANVECHTEN, the mentor whose support and ad-
vocacy helped to ensure the publication in 1926 of
The Weary Blues, his first book, by ALFRED A.
KNOPF.Fine Clothes to the Jewwas published in the
early stages of Hughes’s three-year patronage rela-
tionship with philanthropist CHARLOTTEOSGOOD
MASON.
The controversial title of the volume was
taken from “Hard Luck,” a poem included in the
volume. “Hard Luck” was one of 17 poems in the
volume that Hughes wrote “after the manner of
the Negro folk-songs known as Blues.” In the
prefatory note that he included, Hughes reminded
his readers that the “mood of the Bluesis almost
always despondency, but when they are sung peo-
ple laugh.” In “Hard Luck,” Hughes’s realistic
speaker considered the limited options available to
an individual when “hard luck overtakes you.”
There is “[n]othin’ for you to do,” he insists,
“When hard luck overtakes you / Nothin’ for you
to do. / Gather up yo’ fine clothes / An’ sell ’em to
de Jew.” The poem, which focuses first on the
Jewish-owned pawn and trade shops in NEWYORK
CITY, then chronicles the potentially self-destructive
efforts of the hard-luck individual who is “so low
down” that if he “was a mule” with a “wagon to
haul,” he would be unable to do so because he158 Finding a Way Out