Term
O Mourner, you shall be free when the good Lord sets you free
If (that mule) dies I'll tan his skin, and if he don't I'll ride him again" |
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Definition
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Term
| Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble |
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Definition
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Term
| Their color is a diabolic dye |
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Definition
On Being Brought from Africa to America
Phyllis Wheatley |
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Term
| The gentle breezes of the spring no longer waft a sweet perfume |
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Definition
The Swan- Vain Pleasures
George Moses Horton |
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Term
| Gaz'd on the husband of her youth, with anguish none may paint or tell |
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Definition
The Slave Auction
Frances E.W. Harper |
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Term
| This is the debt i pay/Just for one riotous day |
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Definition
The Debt
Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
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Term
| A minute to smile and an hour to weep in |
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Definition
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Term
| Where shall we meet (with freedom), who knows, who knows? |
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Definition
A Song
Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
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Term
| I know what the caged bird feels |
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Definition
Sympathy
Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
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Term
| We sing, but oh, the clay is vile/beneath our feet and long the mile |
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Definition
We Wear the Mask
Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
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Term
gibberish
When we'se reco'nised ez citiz--
Huh Uh! Chillun, let us pray! |
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Definition
Ante-Bellum Sermon
Paul Lawrence Dunbar |
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Term
| O Black slave singer, gone forgot, unfamed |
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Definition
O Black and Unknown Bards
James Weldon Johnson |
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Term
| Weep not--weep not, She is not dead; she's resting in the bosom of Jesus |
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Definition
Go Down Death
James Weldon Johnson |
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Term
What though before us lies the open grave?
...
Pressed to the wall dying, but fighting back! |
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Definition
If We Must Die
Claude McKay |
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Term
| And little lads, lynchers that were to be/ danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee |
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Definition
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Term
| While to (America's) alien gods I bend my knee/Something in me is lost, forever lost |
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Definition
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Term
| The best of me is but the least of you |
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Definition
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Term
| Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state/ I stand within her walls with not a shred of terror, malice, not a word or jeer |
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Definition
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Term
Find in it the superhuman power/ to hold me to the letter of your law!
...
where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass |
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Definition
The White House
Claude McKay |
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Term
| Bow lowly down before the sacred sight of man's Divinity alive in stone |
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Definition
St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd
Claude McKay |
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Term
| Yielding to new words and a weak palabra of a white-faced-sardonic-god |
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Definition
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Term
There swarm a million bees
Bees passing in and out the moon
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Wish that I might fly out past the moon and curl forever in some far-off flower |
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Definition
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Term
| Where only chips and stumps are left to show the solid proof of former domicile |
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Definition
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Term
| What they were and what they are to me/ caroling softly souls of slavery |
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Definition
Song of the Son
Jean Toomer |
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Term
any somewhat-recognizable allusion
Crispus Attucks, Sojourner Truth, Banquo, Golgotha, New Negro
"With the Peoples of the World...We advance! |
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Definition
Dark Symphony
Melvin B. Tolson |
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Term
| My soul has grown deep like the rivers |
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Definition
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes |
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Term
So, boy, don't you turn back
...
Cause you find it's kinder hard
...
And life for me ain't bee no crystal stair |
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Definition
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes |
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Term
| I wonder where I'm gonna die, being neither white nor black? |
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Definition
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Term
Today they send me to eat in the kitchen
...
tomorrow they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed |
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Definition
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Term
| Fell in love with a gal I thought was kind. She made me lose ma money an' almost lose ma mind |
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Definition
Po' Boy Blues
Langston Hughes |
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Term
| Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- and then run? |
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Definition
Harlem- What Happens to a Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes |
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Term
| Small wonder that my children glean in fields they have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit |
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Definition
A Black Man Talks of Reaping
Arna Bontemps |
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Term
| I shall come back. But it will not be here. If you want me you must search for me beneath the palms of Africa |
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Definition
Nocturne At Bethesda
Arna Bontemps |
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Term
Poplars are standing there still as death.
The years go back with an iron clank. |
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Definition
Southern Mansion
Arna Bontemps |
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Term
| He (Jesus) only seeks to put (the cross) there because my skin is black. |
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Definition
Simon the Cyrenian Speaks
Countee Cullen |
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Term
to struggle up a never-ending stair
...
to make a poet black, and bid him sing! |
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Definition
Yet Do I Marvel
Countee Cullen |
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Term
He poked out his tongue and called me "n-----"
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Of all the things that happened there (Baltimore) that's all I remember. |
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Definition
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Term
Now will the poets sing, their cries go thundering
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I wonder why. |
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Definition
Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song
Countee Cullen |
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Term
blacks on a ship, La Amistad.
Voyages through death to life upon these shores. |
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Definition
Middle Passage
Robert Hayden |
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Term
| (Black) children, wordless and remote, wave at us from kindling porches |
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Definition
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Term
papayas too ripe and pyramids of rotting oranges
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Aloft, the Fire King's flashing mask of tin looks down with eyes of sunstruck glass. |
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Definition
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Term
No baby, no you may not go, for I fear those guns will fire.
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Baby, where are you? |
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Definition
Ballad of Birmingham
Dudley Randall |
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Term
You remember the children that you got that you did not get.
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Believe that even in my deliberateness, I was not deliberate. |
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Definition
The Mother
Gwendolyn Brooks |
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Term
I think it must be lonely to be God.
...Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great in solitude. Without a hand to hold. |
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Definition
The Preacher Ruminates
Gwendolyn Brooks |
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Term
Two who are mostly good. Two who have lived their day.
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Remembering, with twinklings and twinges. |
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Definition
The Bean Eaters
Gwendolyn Brooks |
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Term
The Pool Players
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We jazz June. We die soon. |
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Definition
We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks |
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Term
| his tikis were hand carved out of ivory and came express from the motherland. he would greet u in yoruba. woooooo-jim he bes so cool. |
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Definition
But He Was Cool
Don L. Lee |
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Term
When I was born I was black.
...
When you die you turn purple. And you call me colored? |
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Definition
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Term
| Black poets should live- not leap from steel bridges (like the white boys do.) |
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Definition
For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide
Etheridge Knight |
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Term
| When you turn from starchecking to checking yourself. How do you sound, your words, are they really yours? |
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Definition
Poem for Half-White College Students
LeRoi Jones |
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Term
| I hear glasses and pots and pans falling. I hear fleeing from the room. I hear them running up the stairs. |
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Definition
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