"seven o’clock"

Published December 7, 1941

Description

Seven O’Clock from HARLEM as seen by hirschfeld. Lithograph, 1941

Category

The title is mysterious and she is mysterious. Is it seven AM or PM? Is she a working woman or a working girl? Has she been working all night? Or working all day? She is definitely tired. I don’t think she’s a real Harlemite. I think she’s newly arrived from the South. She hasn’t quite got the Harlem style. The real Harlem style—the girls I worked with at the Cotton Club had no money, but they had it. She looks worn down by life and can’t afford to get her hair done. She looks a little defeated. She reminds me of Langston Hughes’ “Miss Blues’es Child”:

If the blue would let me.
Lord know I would smile.
If the blues would let me,
I would smile, smile, smile.
Instead of that I’m cryin’—
I must be Miss Blues’es child.

-Lena Horne

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