Carrie Williams Clifford, "Character or Color--Which?" (1911)
What is black or white?
Or small or great, or rich or poor?
Just so the man's all right?
O, vain and haughty white man, why
Of ancestry prate so?
Can you in tracing your descent.
Farther than Adam go?
Why boast of culture ? Well you know.
Ere to your present state
Of progress and renown you'd come,
(With statesmen wise and great — )
The blacks had splendidly achieved
Long centuries before;
Their monuments, unrivaled still,
Adorn old Afric's shore.
No adventitious circumstance
Can fix a people's station.
Integrity's the thing that counts
In any man or nation.
Then modestly let's run our course —
All hist'ry tells the story:
No race but has its page of shame.
None lacks its page of glory.
So what is blood or what is birth?
What is black or white?
Or great or small, or rich or poor.
Just so the man's all right?
Published in Race Rhymes, 1911