Asked by two white student editors of Contempo to write a poem about the nine Scottsboro Boys, who were falsely accused but convicted of rape of two white prostitutes on a train, Hughes wrote “Christ in Alabama,” which was published on the occasion of his scheduled appearance at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In this poem he identified Christ with an illegitimate black offspring of a white man and a black woman. Christ is a nigger, Beaten and black— Oh, bare your back. Mary is His mother, Mammy of the South, Silence your mouth. God is His father— White Master above Grant Him
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