The Landlord (Symbol)
Though the landlord is a character in the poem, Hughes is less interested in exploring him as an individual than he is in examining him as part of a broader system. While the landlord sets the machinery of racism and inequality in motion by refusing to help the tenant and then calling the police, he is only the most obvious and straightforward representation of those evils. In fact, Hughes implies, it is almost inevitable that the tenant will end up homeless, imprisoned, or otherwise harmed. It's almost coincidental that his fight with the landlord is the final straw. However, for the tenant as well as the reader, the landlord is the human face of racism as well as a beneficiary of it.
The Newspaper (Symbol)
If the landlord symbolizes racism in its most active, potent forms, the newspaper symbolizes the various bystanders and accomplices who feed into the tenant's problems. The final stanza of the poem consists entirely of lines from a newspaper, describing the tenant's arrest, trial, and sentencing. These newspaper quotes are written in an almost insultingly detached voice, even while they perpetuate racist stereotypes and take a biased attitude towards the tenant. The newspaper, in other words, represents a supposedly neutral, uninterested observer, responsible for narrating rather than influencing events. Yet the very nature of its narration is biased, perpetuating the racism and injustice that have caused the tenant to go to jail in the first place.
