Lead Man Holler

HENRY KOERNER

Harry Belafonte

The young man used to ride the New York subways with a pencil in his pocket and a chip on his shoulder. Sometimes, when he saw the placards for a cosmetic lotion urging straphangers to preserve the soft white beauty of their hands, he would take out his pencil and scrawl derisive comments: "How about Negro hands?" or "What if you're Chinese?" Car cards urging brotherhood and tolerance got the inscription: "There is bigotry in America." The girl who often rode with him would remonstrate, but the...

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