Category Archives: Hope, Determination, and the Future

Despite continued discrimination–including lynching, segregation, disfranchisement, debt peonage, restrictions on military service, the convict lease system–African Americans generally wrote poems that reflected faith in themselves and in their country. Religion frequently played a part in their view of their past accomplishments and in the future possibilities.

Go It, Black Boy ( 1917)

A. Fay Jordan; Half-Century Magazine, July 1917

Go it, black boy, go it?
Oh, never hesitate;
You cannot be victorious
If you stand around and wait.

Continue reading →

The Negro’s Challenge (1915)

Carrie Parker Taylor; Chicago Defender, September 25, 1915

You complain, my brother, my lily white brother,
  Of our poor race now and then,
Yet you never have said what we should do
  To prove to you that we're men. Continue reading →

E Pluribus Unum (1917)

Edna Perry Booth; Chicago Defender, August 4, 1917

I wonder if Abe Lincoln can look down from where he is,
And see the things that happen in this land that once was his;
I wonder if his heart aches; if the fears bedim his eyes;
If heaven is not quite perfect for him, beyond the skies. Continue reading →

Afro-American Hymn, Or Prayer of the Oppressed (1906)

C.O.H. Thoras [?], D.C., L.L.B; Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, October 26, 1906

Tune–America

 Great God of Nations, we
 Have met to offer thee
 Our chant of praise.
 Of mercies past we sing
 Our present sorrows bring,
 And thy sure promises
 We ask--fulfill.

 Bless the race of wailing,
 Who to Thee are praying,
 Where 'ere they dwell. Continue reading →

We Are Rising (1907)

John W. Gross Jr.; Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, August 10, 1907

Among the saying of our race,
   Suggestive and surprising;
That fill a most exalted place,
   Is "tell them we are rising." Continue reading →

No Danger (1903)

[Washington Star]; Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, July 11, 1903

Children at the circus,
   Children in the street;
Children in their tattered clothes
   And children fine and neat. Continue reading →

The Black Man’s Soul (1915)

James D. Corrothers; Crisis, October 1915

A curious giant, years ago,
Blind and black, down the Valley of Woe.
Untutored, and groping in primal night,
He fondled the harp, with a child’s delight. Continue reading →

Paean (1915)

Otto L. Bohanan; Crisis, March 1915

Keep me in chains! I defy you!
That is a pow’r I deny you!
I will sing! I will rise!
Up! To the lurid skies–
With the smoke of my soul,
With my last breath,
Tar-feathered, I shall cry:
Ethiopia shall not die!
And hand in hand with Death,
Pass on!
I shall not curse you. But singing–
My singing! fatefully ringing
Till startled and dumb
You falter, the sum
Of your crime shall reveal–
This do I prophesy . . .
O Heart wrung dry!
Awake!
Startle the world with thy cry:
Ethiopia shall not die!

We Are Men (1914)

Wm. H. Maxwell; Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, March 7, 1914

Though we are black, and they are white,
Though they seem high and term us low,
They should not strangle with ugly might,
For we are men and the world must know. Continue reading →

The Colored Race (1913)

D. Webb Johns; Baltimore Afro-American Ledger, December 13, 1913

Stolen from their native land, sold in slavery;
   Looked upon to be outcasts, full of faith are we;
By God freed but a short while, marching on with grade,
   Grasping opportunities, are the colored race. Continue reading →

Lives and Dreams

African American Newspapers, 1890-1930