The Book of American Negro Poetry

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of American Negro Poetry by Edited by James Weldon Johnson
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Title: The Book of American Negro Poetry
Author: Edited by James Weldon Johnson
Release Date: April 10, 2004 [EBook #11986]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY
Chosen and Edited?With An Essay On The Negro's Creative Genius
by?JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
Author of "Fifty Years and Other Poems"
1922?Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York
Printed in the U.S.A. by the Quinn & Boden Company, Rahway, N.J.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR?A Negro Love Song?Little Brown Baby?Ships That Pass in the Night?Lover's Lane?The Debt?The Haunted Oak?When de Co'n Pone's Hot?A Death Song
JAMES EDWIN CAMPBELL?Negro Serenade?De Cunjah Man?Uncle Eph's Banjo Song?Ol' Doc' Hyar?When Ol' Sis' Judy Pray?Compensation
JAMES D. CORROTHERS?At the Closed Gate of Justice?Paul Laurence Dunbar?The Negro Singer?The Road to the Bow?In the Matter of Two Men?An Indignation Dinner?Dream and the Song
DANIEL WEBSTER DAVIS?'Weh Down Souf?Hog Meat
WILLIAM H. A. MOORE?Dusk Song?It Was Not Fate
W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS?A Litany of Atlanta
GEORGE MARION McCLELLAN?Dogwood Blossoms?A Butterfly in Church?The Hills of Sewanee?The Feet of Judas
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE?Sandy Star and Willie Gee?I. Sculptured Worship?II. Laughing It Out?III. The Exit?IV. The Way?V. Onus Probandi?Del Cascar?Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves?Ironic: LL.D?Scintilla?Sic Vita?Rhapsody
GEORGE REGINALD MARGETSON?Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and the Poetry Society
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON?O Black and Unknown Bards?Sence You Went Away?The Creation?The White Witch?Mother Night?O Southland?Brothers?Fifty Years
JOHN WESLEY HOLLOWAY?Miss Melerlee?Calling the Doctor?The Corn Song?Black Mammies
LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL?Tuskegee?Christmas at Melrose?Summer Magic?The Teacher
EDWARD SMYTH JONES?A Song of Thanks
RAY G. DANDRIDGE?Time to Die?'Ittle Touzle Head?Zalka Peetruza?Sprin' Fevah?De Drum Majah
FENTON JOHNSON?Children of the Sun?The New Day?Tired?The Banjo Player?The Scarlet Woman
R. NATHANIEL DETT?The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON?The Heart of a Woman?Youth?Lost Illusions?I Want to Die While You Love Me?Welt?My Little Dreams
CLAUDE McKAY?The Lynching?If We Must Die?To the White Fiends?The Harlem Dancer?Harlem Shadows?After the Winter?Spring in New Hampshire?The Tired Worker?The Barrier?To O. E. A?Flame-Heart?Two-an'-Six
JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.?A Prayer?And What Shall You Say?Is It Because I Am Black??The Band of Gideon?Rain Music?Supplication
ROSCOE C. JAMISON?The Negro Soldiers
JESSIE FAUSET?La Vie C'est la Vie?Christmas Eve in France?Dead Fires?Oriflamme?Oblivion
ANNE SPENCER?Before the Feast of Shushan?At the Carnival?The Wife-Woman?Translation?Dunbar
ALEX ROGERS?Why Adam Sinned?The Rain Song
WAVERLEY TURNER CARMICHAEL?Keep Me, Jesus, Keep Me?Winter Is Coming
ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON?Sonnet
CHARLES BERTRAM JOHNSON?A Little Cabin?Negro Poets
OTTO LEYLAND BOHANAN?The Dawn's Awake!?The Washer-Woman
THEODORE HENRY SHACKLEFORD?The Big Bell in Zion
LUCIAN B. WATKINS?Star of Ethiopia?Two Points of View?To Our Friends
BENJAMIN BRAWLEY?My Hero?Chaucer
JOSHUA HENRY JONES, JR.?To a Skull
PREFACE
There is, perhaps, a better excuse for giving an Anthology of American Negro Poetry to the public than can be offered for many of the anthologies that have recently been issued. The public, generally speaking, does not know that there are American Negro poets--to supply this lack of information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's effort.
Moreover, the matter of Negro poets and the production of literature by the colored people in this country involves more than supplying information that is lacking. It is a matter which has a direct bearing on the most vital of American problems.
A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced. The world does not know that a people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.
The status of the Negro in the United States' is more a question of national mental attitude toward the race than of actual conditions. And nothing will do more to change that mental attitude and raise his status than a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the production of literature and art.
Is there likelihood that the American Negro will be able to do this? There is, for the good reason that he possesses the innate powers. He has the emotional endowment, the originality and artistic conception, and, what is more important, the power of creating that which has universal appeal and influence.
I make here what may appear to be a more startling statement by saying that the Negro has already proved the possession of these powers by being the creator of the only things artistic that have yet sprung from American soil and been universally acknowledged as distinctive American products.
These creations by the American Negro may be summed up under four heads. The first two are the Uncle