Alabama Boy In Harlem
From the back:
From the Fields of Alabama to the Jungles of Harlem
Jule was a country boy—shy, unsophisticated, quiet-spoken. But when a white man took his girl he exploded into violence. And then he had to flee for his life—far from Alabama, far from the South, into the neon-lit anonymity of Harlem.
Like so many country boys before him, Jule was dazzled by his new surroundings. He found himself caught up in the fast crowds and the fast life—and soon he was a plaything for the pleasure-bent women who sought his hard body and his hard caresses.
Here is a dynamite-packed story of a young man’s struggle to preserve his self-respect among the wiles and temptations of the big city.
1959: The lovely peaceful fields of Alabama compared to the jungles and all things jungly in Harlem. All right so far. But is Jule a good old boy country bumpkin or a fair-skinned ” person of colour” – devious as those persons always are? Why mention the man who took his girl as being white unless he was not white himself even though the cover picture portrays him as perhaps being white. It’s all very confusing for the Alabama KKK Brigade and I don’t think this book would of sold well in the land of cotton and Magnolias. But I should say he’s certainly in Harlem, who has a lovely arse and is not too black-looking – just to be on the safe side regarding our simple country boy’s ethnicity
Charles Copeland’s art.
George Wylie Henderson wrote about what he knew, as he was African American himself.