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.

He stood with the hot tears falling
On the bird, in his outstretched hand;
I was proud of his boyish weeping,
For I loved, and could, understand.
But this thing you have laid to his doing,
Is so foreign to all that I know.
I tell you my boy is guiltless;
Release him and let him go.

Do you think with his heart so tender,
He is guilty of this foul thing?
Because you must punish someone,
Must it be my boy who must wing?
Well, I am his mother! I love him.
If someone must suffer and die,
And the law be appeased; God in the heaven
That one, of the world, shall be I.”

L’Envoi

My heart goes back through the ages,
to an older, older time,
to that other Son and Mother,
And another people’s crime;
to a Calvary, and crosses
Standing on a distant hill–
And I know God has a reason:
He I with his people still.