Chapter 8, Africa Summary

His job aboard the S.S. West Hesseltine was to watch over the petty officers' mess and make up their staterooms. After docking in Dakar, Africa, Hughes was pleased to find that Africa was not as primitive as the movies had portrayed. However, just as in America, Langston was discriminated against because of the color of his skin. In Africa, Hughes, because of his mixed heritage, was considered "colored," not black. This hurt Hughes deeply, and the only friend he could make in Africa was a sixteen-year-old mulatto boy, about whom he wrote "Cross." Hughes saw many parts of the African coast, including: the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast, the Niger, the Congo, the Bight of Benin, Calabar, and the Cameroons.

Langston was invited to the house of a Mjohammedan trader, who showed him statues, cloth, ivory, exotic...