The Warmth of Other Suns

White Houses

Your door is shut against my tightened face,

And I am sharp as steel with discontent;

But I possess the courage and the grace

To bear my anger proudly and unbent.

The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,

And passion rends my vitals as I pass,

Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.

Oh I must search for wisdom every hour,

Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,

And find it in the superhuman power

To hold me to the letter of your law!

Oh I must keep my heart inviolate-

Against the potent poison of your hate.

            -Claude McKay

This poem from The New Negro (pg. 134) by Claude McKay most closely resembles the struggle that Robert Joseph Pershing Foster faced in The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. When driving from the South to California he attempts to find a hotel to rent just inside the New Mexico border and thinks to himself “he was free now, like a regular American” (Wilkerson, 206). Yet after being turned down by three different hotels where he needed to rent a room he realized that “he had driven more than fifteen hundred miles and things were no different” (210). Like in the poem, the doors were shut again and again in his face and there was nothing he could do but move on and attempt to find somewhere to sleep. At the last motel where he is denied service, the owners are from a Northern state and can understand his plea but still refuse service to him following the laws that are still enforced even in “free” states.  From here, Foster has to find it in himself to keep going even though he has not slept in almost 3 days. This is when he has to dig deep and find it in his heart to continue on. In the poem this is reflected in the “pavement slabs” and how they begin to burn beneath the feet. The “search for wisdom” in the poem can be seen as a search for Foster to find a kind soul who will house a black man for one night.  The wisdom will lie in one white hotel owner being able to see past the color of Foster’s skin and recognize him as a man and a fellow American. In the end, Foster makes it to San Diego where he gets a nights rest and than continues on to California. On his way he says that “‘It’s gonna be lucky for me in California. It’s gonna be good’” (216). In McKay’s poem the person had to guard their heart from the “potent poison” of the hate of others around them and by making himself believe it, Foster is making sure he is guarded from the hate that still exists within many even, in California.