The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock

A color motif runs throughout the poem, highlighting the kind of racism based on the darkness of skin tone (colorism), as well as connecting nature with pleasure. At the end of the poem, “brownish” is repeated in Lines 55 and 58: “brownish girls” and “brownish boy,” respectively. These lines refer to the Black students whose attendance at Little Rock Central High School made national news. They were discriminated against because of their skin tone, and the repetition of the color emphasizes the kind of prejudice they faced.

There is some ambiguity—or multiple ways—in which the other colors that appear in the poem can be read. For instance, the outdoor concerts are “on the special twilight green” (Line 23). Green connects to nature and shared recreational space. Twilight is made up of colors that are mentioned later in the stanza about love. Women “re-teach purple and unsullen blue” (Line 34). These are colors associated with twilight, offering one reading of the romantic encounter happening outside. Pleasure itself could be associated through synesthesia (a crossing of senses) with these colors, or the colors could refer to some of the darkest skin tones (blue-black is often discussed in the