BLACK HISTORY MONTH - POST #3

Today's blog post will focus on Black poetry.  I've always enjoyed poetry; I've enjoyed reading it and hearing it.  (I used to write, or try to write, poetry on my own many years ago.)

My inspiration for this post is a recent news story out of Florida that centers around America's Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's poem, 'The Hill We Climb', which Gorman herself read at the inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021.

In 2023, a parent of an elementary school student complained that the poem contained "indirect hate speech" and it would "cause confusion and indoctrinate children".  The result was the poem being banned for elementary students and restricted to middle school students.

Indirect hate speech?  Cause confusion and indoctrination?  Really?

I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden and was utterly blown away by Ms. Gorman's poem and her reading of it.  See what you think...
                                                                                                                             

I continue with Langston Hughes.

A poet, social activist, and author, Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural revival and intellectual uprising, that took place during the 1920's and 1930's in the Harlem section of New York City.  Hughes' work inspired others in Harlem, throughout the country, and around the world.

The idea of "coming to the table", for which there are religious and secular versions and references, is central to Hughes' poem 'I, Too', first published in The Weary Blues in 1926, nearly 100 years ago.

I, TOO

by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

                                                                                                                             

Next, I will highlight a poem that a dear friend of mine recently shared on social media.  (Thank you, Amber!)  The author is Claude McKay.

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born poet and writer who came to the United States to attend college -- he would attend Tuskegee University and Kansas State University -- to study agriculture.  During that time, he was heavily influenced by the writings of W.E.B. DuBois.  He would move to New York City to begin living here permanently.  He would also become a prominent part of the Harlem Renaissance.

During the summer of 1919, White mobs across twenty-six cities committed several horrific acts of racial violence, resulting in hundreds killed and thousands injured.  Collectively, these race riots were known as the Red Summer.  McKay saw some of these riots himself while working for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

In 1919, McKay wrote and published his sonnet, 'If We Must Die', as a response to what he saw.

IF WE MUST DIE

by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

                                                                                                                             

Having mentioned W.E.B. DuBois above, I will highlight him next.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born in Massachusetts in the late 1800's and would become the first Black person to earn of Ph.D. from Harvard, as well as one of the most prominent and prolific Black leaders, whose work and writings are still important today.

DuBois was one of the founding members of the NAACP.  His work as editor was for the organization's publication The Crisis, which is still in print today.

DuBois was a sociologist, an author, a poet, a historian, an editor, and an activist in America and the Pan-Africanism movement.  In 1900, he attended the first Pan-African Conference, which inspired him to organize a series of four Pan-African Congress meetings between 1919 and 1927.  

Wanting to create an encyclopedia of the African diaspora, a project that the government of Ghana would fund, he moved to Ghana at the age of 93.  Unfortunately, DuBois would die two years later, on the day before the historic March on Washington in 1963.

Any of his non-poetry works would be excellent choices for reading, but this post is about poetry.  W.E.B. DuBois, a Black man with a lighter skin color, could pass for a White man, by his own account.  However, in his 1907 poem, The Song of the Smoke, DuBois outright proclaims his Blackness and rejects "passing" for anything else. 

THE SONG OF THE SMOKE

by W.E.B. DuBois

I am the Smoke King

I am black!

I am swinging in the sky,

I am wringing worlds awry;

I am the thought of the throbbing mills,

I am the soul of the soul-toil kills,

Wraith of the ripple of trading rills;

Up I’m curling from the sod,

I am whirling home to God;

I am the Smoke King

I am black.

I am the Smoke King,

I am black!

I am wreathing broken hearts,

I am sheathing love’s light darts;

Inspiration of iron times

Wedding the toil of toiling climes,

Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes —

Lurid lowering ’mid the blue,

Torrid towering toward the true,

I am the Smoke King,

I am black.

I am the Smoke King,

I am black!

I am darkening with song,

I am hearkening to wrong!

I will be black as blackness can —

The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man!

For blackness was ancient ere whiteness began.

I am daubing God in night,

I am swabbing Hell in white:

I am the Smoke King

I am black.

I am the Smoke King

I am black!

I am cursing ruddy morn,

I am hearsing hearts unborn:

Souls unto me are as stars in a night,

I whiten my black men — I blacken my white!

What’s the hue of a hide to a man in his might?

Hail! great, gritty, grimy hands —

Sweet Christ, pity toiling lands!

I am the Smoke King

I am black.

                                                                                                                             

I hope you find these poems both inspiring and educational.  I encourage you to seek out more Black poets.  If you have any suggestions of Black poets, click on Post a Comment below. 

Terry