Little Rock is a bilingual poem published by Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén in 1958. The text is a direct denounce of the racial segregation in the United States, after the Little Rock Crisis, one of the first desegregation expressions as consequence of the uprising movement for Civil Rights. As a satirical claim, the poem wrote in both English and Spanish languages serves as an appeal to imagine how a changing world would be without race differences. As part of the anthology La paloma del vuelo popular (the dove of popular flight), the composition is fully representative of the “black poetry”[1] he used to write, at same time as the use of names and real situations give a qualitative value where applied.
As seen in the final verses, the references to Little Rock city and the Arkansas governor Faubus turn into adjectives for qualifying segregation actions:
As a piece of literature, was a response to the Little Rock events, in the same way as done by jazzist Charles Mingus in Fables of Faubus. The coherence of his vindication can be found in latter works in which he «continued to rail against the rabid racism of the United States. His ironic El Gran Zoo (The Great Zoo) is caustic in its critic of “Lynch Law”»[3] (law that is, by the way, satirized in the verse of “Little Rock” «[...] sons of Lynch their playmates»).