African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Robert Whitaker, "Awakening" (1927)

Awakening 

By Robert Whitaker 

The Negro in his blindness
     Bows down to white men's gods,
Content with crumbs of kindness
     Or any other odds;
Yet once his wits were duller,
     Once, weaker his backbone;
And at last the man of color
     Stirs, and dreams about his own.


Published in The Messenger, May 1927

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