Geraldine M. Campbell [?]; Chicago Defender, July 21, 1917
To the God of all the heaven, to the God of just and right,
To the God of strength and power, to the God of wield and might,
To the God of ever nation, every country, every creed,
To the God that keeps a record of every act, and every deed,
Dost Thou hear our cries and groanings,
Dost Thou know our pains and moanings?
How much longer must we wait?
Paul Lawrence Dunbar [from Century Magazine]; Cleveland Gazette, February 22, 1902
Pray why are you so bare,
O bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me? Continue reading
No author; Cleveland Gazette, May 12, 1906
In the state of old Missouri,
With their breath of whiskey strong;
Did they lynch three innocent Negroes
Who were guilty of no wrong.
A. A. Lott; Richmond Planet, August 26, 1899
Alexandria, Va.–On the recent lynching in this city, Aug. 8th.
________________________
What means this howling, hideous shout, "Take him out! Take him out!" What can be all this noise about, "Take him out! Take him out!" The midnight shriek reaches the sky, All over town both far and nigh, The sound shocks every passer-by, "Take him out! Take him out!"
J. Riley Dungee, for the A.N.P; Pittsburgh Courier, October 11, 1930
Hark, Fellow Citizens of hell, Hear ye in my doleful story-- How Mississippi's filched my fame And gone off with my glory. In unexcelled malignity I heretofore held away, 'Til Mississippi raped my role And took my rank away.
In diabolic cruelty, I mastered all the while, But Mississippi savagery Has got me skint a mile. Beside a Mississippi snob I look like Abraham, Beside a Mississippi Mob This camp don't count a damn.
The patronage of former time No longer I command. For friends have found a fouler clime In Mississippi Land. Now I am Mississippi bound, My prestige to reclaim, To set up my dominion there And resurrect my fame.
It's too infernal holy here, It ain't like home no more; So hell's for rent, and I am bent For Mississippi's shore. This fiend-forsaked synagogue Will drive a demon dippy, I've got to quit this pious pit, I'm bound for Mississippi.
O, country, 'tis of thee,
Land of the Lynching Bee,
Of thee I sing.
How long will this base wrong
Pollute thy freedom's song?
Perpetrated by a throng
Of heartless fiends.
Leila Amos Pendleton; Crisis, 1916
Hang there, O my murdered brothers, sons of Ethiopia, our common Mother! Hang there, with faces upturned, mutely calling down vengeance from the Most High God!
The Deacon [E.C. Jennings]; California Eagle, October 11, 1929
[part of a series]
Why spend any money
Sending missionaries abroad
To teach the happy heathen
How to serve our Lord.
With a Bible in one hand
And a sword in the other
We rob him of his birth-right
And then call him brother.
Anne Spencer; Crisis, March 1922 (CHECK)
Most things are colorful things–the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men; but the white are free!
Edna Perry Booth (Brooklyn, NY); Chicago Defender, February 2, 1918
“They have taken my boy a prisoner;
My boy, who is all my pride.
Who when only a little shaver,
Stood close at my knee and cried
Because he had found in the meadow,
Near the edge of the bubbling spring,
A bird, with its breast all crimsoned,
And a pitiful broken wing.
