escaped the slums

"And we, the aspiring, were ashamed to see ourselves as we had once been. We resented being reminded of our origins. Having escaped the slums, we dreaded slipping back, and we resented savagely the turning of our new homes into a new slum area. All this resentment was flung at the new arrivals. Had they left their junk, dressed in their best and moved in with even one suite of new furniture bought on the installment plan, the women would have turned out with cups of tea. For then the new arrivals would have been, like us. the aspiring. But they had brought the slums with them, defiantly. So the voices of the women were bitter against them. And they, sensing hostility, became aggressively louder and more vulgar."

~~ from Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa by Peter Abrahams

England had no color bar

"Rathebe talked fascinatingly about his travels. He had been to England and America. And we never tired of hearing him tell of his experiences. In England he had lived in the homes of white people, had sat at table with them! England had no color bar. A man could go where he pleased when he pleased. A man was just a man. Of course, people had looked. He was different. But there was no color bar. And he had met Negroes living in England. They had made it their home. Why, the great Paul Robeson lived there!

"But Harlem! Harlem . . . the city of Negroes. A city within a city: not a suburb, not a location, not a slum area, a city . . . We hung on his words; words spoken in an easy, subdued manner stirred our hearts and minds, and led us to wild dreams."

~~ from Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa by Peter Abrahams