men.” Hill uses images of blackness to underscore
the depravity and unenlightened state of the lynch
mob. Their “black design” is achieved in “broad,
bright day” and the speaker is outraged by the sup-
posed lack of witnesses to the abduction. His dis-
gust with the pronouncement that essentially
exonerates the murderers is reiterated in the poem’s
last lines. The speaker insists that the corruption
that justifies, accommodates, and encourages
lynching is “sown, But quietly—now in the open
face / Of day, now in the dark—and when it comes,
/ Stern truth will never write, ‘By hands unknown.’”
Pinckney’s poem was part of a considerable canon of
antilynching writing produced during the Harlem
Renaissance. This was the era in which the NA-
TIONALASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT OF
COLOREDPEOPLE, under the leadership of JAMES
WELDONJOHNSON, become the first organization to
maintain detailed records on lynching and advance
further the courageous political intervention of ac-
tivists such as Ida B. Wells Barnett.
Bibliography
Hill, Leslie Pinckney. Wings of Oppression.Boston: Strat-
ford, 1921.
Yenser, Thomas. Who’s Who in Colored America: A Bio-
graphical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of
African Descent in America, 1933–1937.Brooklyn,
N.Y.: Thomas Yenser, 1937.
Hobby Horse, The
A bookshop that focused primarily on works by
and about African-American writers. Established
by Douglas Howe on West 136th Street in NEW
YORKCITY, the Hobby Horse was a popular gath-
ering place for writers. ZORANEALEHURSTONwas
one of the many who frequented the shop that
promoted new works by African-American writers
and artists.
HolidayWaldo Frank(1923)
A novel by WALDOFRANKthat grappled with the
violence and savagery of LYNCHINGin America.
Its plot spans one full day in a southern town
called Nazareth. The town’s name is an eerie fore-
shadowing of the crucifixion, or lynching, of John
Cloud, a local overseer. The oppressive summer
heat prompts the white Virginia Hade to honor
Cloud’s request that workers be given the day off.
Plans for a religious revival coincide with the day’s
sweltering heat, and the town is gripped in a
deadly religious fervor. A suggestive encounter be-
tween Cloud and Hade produces misleading evi-
dence of their interaction by the bay. Virginia
allows her own self-inflicted wound to be misinter-
preted, and her family leads whites of Nazareth as
they instigate the horrifying lynching of John
Cloud.
Frank scholars such as William Bittner note
the heavy-handed religious symbolism of the novel.
The initials of the victim John Cloud, for instance,
also suggest the name of Jesus Christ. The charac-
ter Virginia Hade functions in ways similar to that
of Judas. Another noteworthy element of the novel
emerges in its powerful inverse color symbolism. In
Holiday,the color black denotes all things good
and virtuous while the color white is linked to evil
and untruths.
Frank consulted JEANTOOMER, a writer and
friend whom he mentored, on questions relating to
African-American culture. The novel’s sparse nat-
ural imagery is evocative of Toomer’s own prose in
CANE.Coupled with the racial epithets that Frank
uses frequently to refer to African Americans are
lines that suggest the haunting and deceptive
beauty of southern landscape. The description of
Nazareth is a striking example of Frank’s stark and
alienating prose: “Nazareth. The Gulf of Mexico
drains soil from her, blood red, to seas gray with
moving. Moving seas of the world move athwart
Nazareth standing... niggers move, niggers
sing... a clot of crimson clay. But the trees sway
up. And a dark man’s eyes peer through the corri-
dor of pine.. .” The novel escalates into melodra-
matic meditations on violence and racial
stereotype. At one point, Virginia Hade berates the
night, a time that she insistently equates with
African Americans: “Yes, you are black,” she de-
clares, “Night, you’re a raping nigger! / And the
autumn day / with its golden sun / and its copper
glow of leaf / and its red earth / I suppose you think
you’re white.” The intense language conveys the
impending violence and the community’s loss of
control.
The publication of Holiday also coincided
with the publication by BONI &LIVERIGHTof240 Hobby Horse, The