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Jessie Fauset, "Oriflamme" (1920)

213
I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I would say, ‘Mammy, what makes you groan so?’ And she would say, ‘I am groaning to think  of my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don’t know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at the stars!’ —Sojourner Truth

I think I see her sitting, bowed and black,
Stricken and seared with slavery’s mortal scars,
Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet
Still looking at the stars.

Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,
Pounding our stubborn hearts on Freedom’s bars,
Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set,
Still visioning the stars!

Published in The Crisis, January 1920

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  1. Jessie Fauset, Poems in "The Crisis" 1910-1926 Amardeep Singh
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  1. Progress and Racial Uplift Amardeep Singh
  2. Common Measure Amardeep Singh
  3. Sojourner Truth Amardeep Singh
  4. Slavery Amardeep Singh