Sarah Collins Fernandis, "Our Colored Soldiery" (1918)
They're marching, marching, marching-
Here you the tramping feet
On cool sequestered roadside
And city's teeming street?
Freedom's insistent drum beat
Has swung their souls in line,
And they are marching forward,
Heeding her call divine.
Brave hearts and clean, hard bodies-
Full measure of man power-
They bring to help give battle
To win her triumph's hour
O, men with dusky faces,
Yet hearts as true as steel,
Filling your fighting places,
You make a strong appeal
For a new, human justice
That knows no color line,
When Freedom's dawn triumphant
Over our world shall shine.
Published in Southern Workman, October 1918