The Great Migration and Lynching

One-Way Ticket pp. 60-61

Hughes, Langston. One-way Ticket Woodcuts by Jacob Lawrence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949.

One-Way Ticket

I pick up my life

And take it with me

And I put it down in

Chicago, Detroit,

Buffalo, Scranton,

Any place that is North and East—

And not Dixie.

I pick up my life

And take it on the train

To Los Angeles, Bakersfield,

Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake,

Any place that is

North and West—

And not South.

I am fed up

With Jim Crow laws,

People who are cruel

And afraid,

Who lynch and run,

Who are scared of me

And me of them.

I pick up my life

And take it away

On a one-way ticket—

Gone up North,

Gone out West,

Gone!

By Langston Hughes