Slave on the Block

“Slave on the Block” is a short story by Langston Hughes that originally appeared in the September 1933 issue of Scribner's Magazine. The story was later published in The Ways of White Folks, a 1934 collection of Hughes’s short stories.

This study guide, based on the 1990 Vintage Classics print edition, quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Anne and Michael Carraway are affluent white bohemians who live in Greenwich Village—and often visit Harlem—during the 1920s, a time when that quarter of the city was the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The Carraways meet a Black man named Luther, the nephew of Emma, their deceased cook, when he comes to their house to claim his aunt’s belongings. When he boldly asks for a job, they hire him on a whim as their gardener. However, both Anne and Michael, who see Black people and culture as exotic, are more interested in painting Luther and using him as a source of material for their art. Luther, a recent migrant from the South, is unemployed and glad to have a comfortable place to live.

Luther quickly takes up with

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