Langston Hughes wrote a poem about Black voters in Miami. Why don’t more of us know? | Opinion
I learned that Langston Hughes wrote a poem about Black voters in Miami while researching a story six years ago. In “The Ballad of Sam Solomon,” Hughes documents how Overtown resident Samuel B. Solomon and his neighbors defied Miami’s Ku Klux Klan by voting in the city’s 1939 primary. The poem opens with:
Sam Solomon said,/You may call out the Klan/But you must’ve forgot/That a Negro is a MAN.
I was born and raised in Miami. Why hadn’t I learned about this poem before? I wondered why this historic moment of Black voters making this country live up to its democratic ideals wasn’t better known — even though the poem is based right here, written in the lyrical words of the Langston Hughes, acclaimed literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
I started researching Solomon, the first Black man to run for a city of Miami commission seat. He was president of the Negro Citizens Service League and owner of a funeral home. Solomon encouraged his neighbors to vote in the city primary even as threats from the Klan filtered into Overtown, or Colored Town as it was known then. A year prior, Florida abolished its discriminatory poll tax, an expensive barrier for Black voters.
The crackers said, Sam,/If you carry this through,/Ain’t no telling what/We’ll do to you.
Leading up to the election, Solomon sat in his home with a well-oiled Winchester rifle across his lap. Dozens of Colored Town residents also armed themselves. I imagine they met in hushed tones, strategizing how they would defend their homes and families if hooded white terrorists attacked.
The evening before Election Day, masked, white-robed men paraded some 70 cars and trucks through Colored Town. Miami’s Klan set 25 wooden crosses ablaze, desecrating street corners in the segregated Black neighborhood. They littered the streets with signed KKK leaflets that read, “Respectable Negro citizens are not voting tomorrow — N-----s stay away from the polls.”
And across from one voting precinct, they hung a life-size dummy by a noose wearing a t-shirt with the words, “This n----- voted.”
Prior to 1939, the record number of Black votes cast in a Miami city primary was 150. The day after the Klan parade, more than 1,400 Black voters cast their ballots, the most ever by Black residents in Miami’s history at that time.
The crackers thought/The Ku Klux was tough—/But the Negroes in Miami/Called their bluff.
In an interview after the election, Solomon said, “The robes we saw them wear just made us grit our teeth with determination to vote. We told Miami we had decided to challenge the Klan for our lawful democratic rights.”
Sam Solomon said,/Go get out your Klan—/But you must’ve forgotten/A Negro is a MAN.
April is national poetry month. I recently held a speakeasy in Overtown’s Red Rooster Pool Hall inviting Miamians to learn about this poem. In partnership with Maven Leadership Collective, and as a part of the O, Miami Poetry Festival, community members were invited to recite their own poems of resistance and defiance.
In 1939, Black residents exercising their voting rights despite the suppression tactics of Jim Crow Miami drew national and international headlines. Life Magazine printed a photographic spread of the Miami Klan parade and the subsequent massive Black voter turnout. The first African-American Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ralph Bunche (for whom Bunche Park in Miami Gardens is named), called Solomon a “spectacular example” of leadership in the South.
Today, in 2024, it’s our duty to resist the devaluation of local Black history — and remember.
As I work on creating free printed materials of Miami’s stories of Black resistance, it is not lost on me that there are no public historical markers or monuments of Sam Solomon and the Black voters in Overtown who made history and inspired Langston Hughes.
There needs to be.
Nadege Green is the founder of Black Miami-Dade, a history and storytelling organization that democratizes access to local Black history. She is an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, and WLRN News.
