Home Song Home Song
March 24, 1926 Oh breezes blowing on the red hill-top By tall fox-tails, Where through dry twigs and leaves and grasses hop The dull-brown quails! Is there no magic floating in the air To bring to me A breath of you, when I am homesick here Across the sea? Oh black boys holding on the cricket ground A penny race! What other black boy frisking round and round, Plays in my place? When picnic days come with their yearly thrills In warm December, The boy in me romps with you in the hills— Remember! Paris, 1925 This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Claude McKay (1889–1948), author of the novels Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929), only published this one poem in The Nation, but he also wrote three essays in the mid-1930s on race relations in New York City—including a firsthand report on the 1935 Harlem riot—and one travel dispatch from North Africa.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Claude McKay
1885–1895: Anarchists Are Vagabonds and Ruffians and Threaten Everything We Most Value on Earth 1885–1895: Anarchists Are Vagabonds and Ruffians and Threaten Everything We Most Value on Earth
There is nothing likely to prove so effective a deterrent as death.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
Christopher Hitchens Was Against the Buzzword ‘Terrorism’ Before He Was For It Christopher Hitchens Was Against the Buzzword ‘Terrorism’ Before He Was For It
The rulers of our world subject us to lectures about the need to oppose terrorism while they prepare, daily and hourly, for the annihilation of us all.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Christopher Hitchens
1915–1965 1915–1965
From World War I to Vietnam, from the red scare to McCarthyism, The Nation stood firm for civil liberties and civil rights, even when that meant being banned—or standing alone.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / D.D. Guttenplan
150 Years of Telling the Truth 150 Years of Telling the Truth
Independence—one of the keys to The Nation’s longevity—has become ever more important in an age that urgently needs dissident and rebellious voices.
Mar 23, 2015 / Katrina vanden Heuvel
What Are ‘Nation’ Interns Reading the Week of 3/22/15? What Are ‘Nation’ Interns Reading the Week of 3/22/15?
What Are ‘Nation’ Interns Reading the Week of 3/22/15?
Mar 21, 2015 / Books & the Arts / StudentNation
March 21, 1980: Carter Announces US Boycott of the Moscow Olympics March 21, 1980: Carter Announces US Boycott of the Moscow Olympics
The Nation supported the boycott, but not for Carter’s reasons.
Mar 21, 2015 / Richard Kreitner and The Almanac
Interview With Steve Earle Interview With Steve Earle
"Everybody thought everybody was fooling everybody. And both of us were probably right to a certain extent, everybody was fooling each of us."
Mar 19, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Eric Alterman
Or to Put It Another Way: 100 Years Ago, We Were Already 50 Years Old Or to Put It Another Way: 100 Years Ago, We Were Already 50 Years Old
The Nation’s archives, Henry James wrote in our fiftieth anniversary issue, “compose the record of the general life of civilization.”
Mar 18, 2015 / Richard Kreitner and Back Issues
Nobody Thought It Likely to Succeed: Reading Our 20th Anniversary Issue as the 150th Goes to Press Nobody Thought It Likely to Succeed: Reading Our 20th Anniversary Issue as the 150th Goes to Press
“To say that it never went wrong would be to make a claim which, even if well grounded, nobody would acknowledge,” the magazine’s founding editor humble-bragged b...
Mar 16, 2015 / Richard Kreitner and Back Issues