Members of the North Shore Poets’ Forum met Saturday, May 19, at the Beverly Public Library. It was my turn (Cathryn O’Hare) this time to present a program, so I chose, “Black poets confront racism in America,” featuring such poets as Fenton Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.
I had recently read “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer writing about his work to free poor and black people unjustly imprisoned and facing execution. He is co-founder of the Equal Justice Institute. He is also a founder of the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum, which both opened in April in Mobile, Alabama. I read in news stories about the goal to bring awareness of the injustices of slavery, the tyranny of racism, and the horror of lynchings, so that one day we may all stand up for peace and justice. To do my bit to spread the word, I decided to study more about the savagery of racism as seen through the eyes of black poets .
Here are just a few links to information:
“African American Protest Poetry”
“Crash Course in Poetry – Harlem Renaissance”
And, here are two poems by Langston Hughes
One way ticket
I pick up my life,
and take it with me,
and I put it down in
Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton,
any place that is
North and East,
and not Dixie.
I pick up my life
and take it on the train,
to Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake
any place that is
North and West,
and not South.
I am fed up
with Jim Crow laws,
people who are cruel
and afraid,
who lynch and run,
who are scared of me
and me of them
I pick up my life
and take it away
on a one-way ticket-
gone up North
gone out West
Gone.
Daybreak In Alabama
When I get to be a composer
I’m gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I’m gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
North Shore Poets' Forum 