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