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Progress & Racial Uplift

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This page collect poems featuring themes of progress, protest, and racial uplift for the African American community. 

The 1910s and 20s were particularly intense periods of activity for the nascent African American Civil Rights movement. The Niagara Movement (1905-1909) led to the creation of the NAACP in 1910. The Crisis would be the official magazine for that organization, and it was edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. Starting with some of the very first issues, Du Bois includes poetry in the magazine, often oriented towards racial justice themes. Other magazines such as Opportunity would also publish a fair amount of poetry starting in the late 1910s. 

Other poems related to topics such as Black excellence / the 'Talented Tenth', Black involvement in highly visible public roles, and poems in tribute to Black leaders such as Frederick Douglass may fall under this category. (There is also a separate Tag category for Tribute poems to Frederick Douglass...)

One of the most famous poems in this category might be James Weldon Johnson's "Fifty Years," which was first published in the New York Times in January 1913, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Gwendolyn B. Bennett's 1924 poem "To Usward" was published in connection with the publication of Jessie Fauset's novel There is Confusion, a major event in the emerging Harlem Renaissance. This poem contains a self-consciousness that was fairly unique for the moment of its publication -- Bennetti is aware of the diversity of ways of experiencing Blackness as a dynamic affirmative identity, and sees the transformative potential in embracing it as such: "Not self-contained with smug identity / But conscious of the strength in entity." 

And Otto Bohanan's "The Dawn's Awake" is a broad celebration of the beginning of a new era, which might be intepreted as linked to the growth of the civil rights movement around the NAACP. 
 

Contents of this tag:

  1. Gwendolyn B. Bennett, "To Usward" (1924)
  2. Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., "A Sonnet to the Negro Soldiers" (1918)
  3. Jessie Fauset, "Oriflamme" (1920)
  4. Langston Hughes, "I , Too" (1925)
  5. James D. Corrothers, "Paul Laurence Dunbar" (1906)
  6. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Hope" (1917)
  7. James Weldon Johnson, "Fifty Years" (1913)
  8. Langston Hughes, "Poem ["We Have Tomorrow..."]" (1926)
  9. Helene Johnson, "The Road" (1926)
  10. Ode to Ethiopia by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1895)
  11. Mattie Mae Stafford, "(Poem within) Colored Women's Economic Council of Los Angeles" (1928)
  12. Sarah Collins Fernandis, "The Torch Bearer" (1916)
  13. Lewis Alexander, "The Dark Brother" (1927)
  14. Ethyl Lewis, "The Optimist" (1920)
  15. Arthur Tunnell, "On Segregation" (1914)
  16. Olivia Ward Bush Banks, "A Hero of San Juan [Hill]" (1899)
  17. Bessie Brent Madison, "For Ethiopia" (1921)
  18. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, "Honor's Appeal to Justice" (1899)
  19. Maggie Pogue Johnson, "The Negro Has a Chance" (1910)
  20. Annette Browne, "Little Brown Boy" (1921)
  21. Gertrude Mossell, "Tell the North That We Are Rising" (1894)
  22. Esther A. Yates “Fettered Liberty” (1915)
  23. Joseph S. Cotter, "The Prophet" (1920)
  24. Otto Bohanan, "The Dawn's Awake!" (1917)
  25. L. Mattes, "To the Negro" (1925)
  26. Lucian B. Watkins, "The Black Madonna And Her Babe" (1918)
  27. Benjamin Griffith Brawley, "The Dawn" (1904)
  28. Carrie Williams Clifford, "We'll Die For Liberty" (1911)
  29. Mae V. Cowdery, "Goal" (1927)
  30. George Reginald Margetson, "Mary Evans Wilson (A Tribute)" (1928)
  31. George Reginald Margetson, "Booker T. Washington" (1909)
  32. Frank B. Coffin, "Voice from the South" (1897)
  33. James Edward McCall, "The New Negro" (1927)
  34. Louise Cass Evans, "Booker Washington" (1908)
  35. George Compton, "The Black Man" (1909)
  36. Raymond Garfield Dandridge, "Supplication" (1920)
  37. Frances E.W. Harper, "Songs For The People" (1895)
  38. Lucian B. Watkins, "A Prayer of the Race That God Made Black" (1919)
  39. Georgia Douglas Johnson, "The Black Runner" (1928)
  40. Charles Bertram Johnson, "The Cup of Knowledge" (1905)
  41. Langston Hughes, "Youth" (1924)
  42. W.E. Dancer, "De Negro Problem" (1909)
  43. Raymond Garfield Dandridge, "Opportunity" (1920)
  44. Carrie Law Morgan Figgs, "The Negro's Upward Flight" (1921)
  45. Anna Elizabeth Cofer, "The Future of the Negro" (1902)
  46. Maurice N. Corbett, "The Future" (1914)
  47. William H. Tibbs, "Awake! Arise! Onward!" (1923)
  48. Carrie Law Morgan Figgs, "We Are Marching" (1921)
  49. Carrie Williams Clifford (Carrie W. Clifford), "Warning" (1928)
  50. Rev. P.A. Scott, "Aim High" (1902)
  51. Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, "Pulse Beats" (1923)
  52. Carrie Law Morgan Figgs, "The Negro Has Played His Part" (1920)
  53. Frances E.W. Harper, "Fifteenth Amendment" (1871)
  54. J. Mord Allen, "The Psalm of the Uplift" (1906)
  55. Poems by Charles Bertram Johnson in "The Book of American Negro Poetry" (1922)
  56. George Marion McClellan, "Daybreak" (1916)
  57. Walter Everette Hawkins, "The Messenger" (1923)
  58. Elsie Taylor Du Trieuille, "The New Negro" (1928)
  59. J. Pauline Smith, "A Prayer" (1922)
  60. Poems by Otto Bohanan in "The Book of American Negro Poetry" (1922)
  61. Richard E.S. Toomey, "The American Negro" (1901)
  62. Carrie Williams Clifford, "Shall We Fight The Jim Crow Car?" (1911)
  63. Robert H. Bonner, Jr, "A New Day" (1928)
  64. Claude McKay, "The International Spirit" (1928)
  65. Mary Ashe Lee, "Afmerica" (1886 version)
  66. Raymond Garfield Dandridge, "Forward!"
  67. Leslie Pinckney Hill, "God's Garden" (1927)
  68. Carrie Williams Clifford, "All Hail! Ye Colored Graduates" (1911)
  69. Countee Cullen, "Black Majesty" (1928)
  70. Mattie Mae Stafford, "Ode to the Brotherhood" (1927)
  71. George Reginald Margetson, "When" (1907)
  72. Raymond Garfield Dandridge, "Awake" (1917)
  73. Frances E.W. Harper, "The Present Age" (1896)
  74. Walter Everette Hawkins, "To the 'Guardian' of Boston, Mass." (1909)
  75. Carrie Williams Clifford, "Marching to Conquest" (1911)
  76. Ann Lawrence (Ann Lawrence-Lucas), "The Messenger" (1924)
  77. Frances Smith Brown, "Seeing the Light" (1927)
  78. James D. Corrothers, "The Psalm of a Race" (1903)
  79. H.T. Johnson, "A Song of Hope" (1904)
  80. Daniel Webster Davis, "The Voice of the Negro" (1904)
  81. Walter Everette Hawkins, "To W.E. Burghardt Du Bois" (1909)
  82. Carrie Williams Clifford, "The Dreamers" (1911)
  83. Will H. Hendrickson, "Dreamer" (1924)
  84. Alonzo Milton Skrine, "The Negro's Worth" (1900)
  85. James D. Corrothers, "The Psalm of a Race" (1903)
  86. Frank B. Coffin, "Frances E. Harper (Tribute)" (1897)