“Despite his affable radio demeanor, Guthrie was still stiff with the prejudices of Okemah and Pampa. He casually referred to African-Americans as “niggers,” and once after an unpleasant clash with blacks on the beach at Santa Monica Bay, he typed up a “Santa Monica Social Register Examine 'Er and Society Section” in which “De Beach Combin' Repo'tah noted that “hot might in'rest you to know dat de 100yd. dark record was broke fo'teen times in fifteen minutes las' nite at Santy Monica Beach.”

His racism was unconscious and unexamined, a by-product of a boyhood spent not far from that part of Oklahoma known as “Little Dixie.” (Both Matt Jennings and Woody's Uncle Jeff    later remarked how they had to take pains not to use the word “nigger,” though Matt, practicing Catholic that he was, ignored racial differences.)

One evening Gutherie [sic] introduced a harmonica solo by its traditional name, “Run, Nigger, Run.”...
[Cray, p.108)]