The Book of American Negro Poetry   By: James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

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.