Anthologies of African American Writing

Anthology of Negro Poetry by Negroes and Others

"An Anthology of Negro Poetry by Negroes and Others." Ed. Beatrice F. Wormley and Charles W. Carter. Under the supervision of Benjamin F. Seldon, State Supervisor of Negro Adult Education. 1930; rev. ed. [Trenton, NJ?]: Works Progress Administration (NJ), 1937. [v]+138+[3] pp. Mimeographed.

● Google Books (2nd ed. 1937?) (the type is sometimes difficult to read in this mimeographed text and there are occasional flaws in the digitization of particular pages: e.g. p. 26)

(1937 edition):
[The table of contents as given in the anthology indicates the sections and authors featured in the text, but does not enumerate the specific poems included in the volume. I've supplemented the table of contents to include the titles of the poems included in the anthology (and have modified page references accordingly).]

[Beatrice F. Wormley and Charles W. Carter] / Preface

I: Early Negro Poets
A. Untaught Melodies (1-5)
● Folk song / Chicken in the Bread Tray (4)
● Folk song / I'm Gwine to Alabamy (5)
● Folk song / She Hugged Me and Kissed Me (5)
B. The Art of Poetry (6-30)
● Jupiter Hammond [sic] / An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries [excerpt] (7)
● Phillis Wheatley / A Hymn to the Evening (9)
● Phillis Wheatley / A Hymn to the Morning (9) [mistitled here as "A Hymn to the Evening" again!]
● Charles Reason / Freedom [excerpt] (10)
● George Moses Horton / On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet's Freedom [excerpt] (11)
● George Moses Horton / Myself (12)
● Frances Ellen Harper / Poem Addressed to Women (13)
● Frances Ellen Harper / Truth (13)
● Frances Ellen Harper / Bury Me in a Free Land (14)
● James Madison Bell / The Progress of Liberty (16)
● James Madison Bell / Song for the First of August (17)
● Alberry [sic] A. Whitman / To the Student (18)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Golden Day (21)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Path (22)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / A Prayer (22)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Of a Clean Book (23)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Dawn (23)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Life (23)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ode to Ethiopia (24)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Life's Tragedy (25)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Whip-Poor-Will and Katy-Did (25)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Temptation (26)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / When de Co'n Pone's Hot (27)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes (28)
● J. Mord Allen / The Psalm of [the] Uplift (30)

II: The Present Day Negro Verse
A. Introduction (31)
● Wesley [sic, Waverley] Turner Carmichael / It's All Through Life (31)
B. Present Day Poets (31-112)
● Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. / The Negro's Educational Creed (32)
● Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. / The Negro Child (33)
● Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. / And What Shall You Say (34)
● Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. / The Mulatto to His Critics (34)
● Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. / The Band of Gideon (35)
● James David Corrothers / At the Closed Gate of Justice (36)
● James David Corrothers / Paul Laurence Dunbar (37)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / Old Friends (38)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / So Much (38)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / Negro Poets (39)
● Fenton Johnson / Children of the Sun (40)
● Fenton Johnson / These Are My People (41)
● James Weldon Johnson / The Creation (42)
● James Weldon Johnson / Fifty Years (1863-1913) (44)
● James Weldon Johnson / O Black and Unknown Bards (46)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Sic Vita (48)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Sandy Star [excerpt] (48)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Thanking God (49)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Thanksgiving (49)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / A Song of Living (To Dr. Wheatland) (50)
● George Reginald Margetson / The Light of Victory (51)
● George Reginald Margetson / Time (52)
● William H. A. Moore / Expectancy (53)
● William H. A. Moore / It Was Not Fate (53)
● William H. A. Moore / As the Old Year Passed (54)
● William H. A. Moore / Dusk Song [excerpt] (54)
● Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. / To a Skull (56)
● Joshua Henry Jones, Jr. / Brothers (56)
● Walter Everette Hawkins / Credo (58)
● Walter Everette Hawkins / Hero of the Road (59)
● Walter Everette Hawkins / Ask Me Why I Love You (59)
● Claude McKay / Spring in New Hampshire (60)
● Claude McKay / Flame-Heart (61)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die (62)
● Claude McKay / America (62)
● Claude McKay / The Tropics in New York (63)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / The Teacher (64)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / Summer Magic (64)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / Lines on Leadership (65)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / Tuskegee (66)
● Eva Alberta Jessye / To a Rosebud (67)
● Mrs. J. W. Hammond / The Optimist (68)
● Alice Dunbar Nelson / Sonnet (69)
● Alice Dunbar Nelson / Snow in October (69)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Heart of a Woman (70)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / Lost Illusions (70)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / I Want to Die While You Love Me (71)
● Angelina Grimke / To the Dunbar High Schol: A Sonnet (72)
● Angelina Grimke / Greeness [sic] (72)
● Jessie Fauset Harris / Dead Fires (73)
● Jessie Fauset Harris / Oblivion (from the French of Massillon Coicou [Haiti]) (73)
● Jessie Fauset Harris / Oriflamme (74)
● Edward Smyth Jones / A Song of Thanks [excerpt] (75)
● Raymond Garfield Dandridge / Time to Die (76)
● George Marion McClellan / A Butterfly in Church (77)
● George Marion McClellan / The Feet of Judas (78)
● Charles P. Wilson / Somebody's Child (79)
● Countee Cullen / Leaves (81)
● Countee Cullen / Ultimatum (82)
● Countee Cullen / From the Dark Tower (to Charles S. Johnson) (83)
● Countee Cullen / Heritage (83)
● Countee Cullen / The Poet Puts His Heart to School (85)
● Countee Cullen / Tableau (86)
● Langston Hughes / I, Too (88)
● Langston Hughes / Aunt Sue's Stories (88)
● Langston Hughes / Mother to Son (89)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers (89)
● Langston Hughes / The Negro (90)
● Jean Toomer / Georgia Dusk (91)
● Jean Toomer / Song of the Son (91)
● Leon H. [sic] Harris / The Steel Makers (93)
● Irvin W. Underhill / To Our Boys (94)
● Roscoe C. Jamison / The Negro Soldiers (96)
● Kelly Miller / I See and Am Satisfied (97)
● James Edwin Campbell / Compensation (99)
● Mae Smith Johnson / To My Grandmothers (100)
● W. E. Burghardt Du Bois / A Litany of Atlanta (103)
● Benjamin Brawley / My Hero (To Robert Gould Shaw) (106)
● Benjamin Brawley / Chaucer (106)
● Charles S. Conner / The Life of the Spirit in the Natural World (107)
● William Edgar Bailey / To a Wild Rose (108)
● Ann Plato / The Dismission of a School Term (109)
● Adolphus Johnson / The Laws of Nature (109)
● Adolphus Johnson / The Poet (110)
● Robert Nathaniel Dett / At Niagara (111)
● Robert Nathaniel Dett / The Rubinstein Staccato Etude (112)

III: Miscellaneous Poems
● Lucian Watkins / The New Negro (113)
● Lucian Watkins / A Prayer of the Race That God Made Black (114)
● Otto Leland Bohanan / The Dawn's Awake! (114)
● Otto Leland Bohanan / The Washer-Woman (115)
● Ann Spencer / The Wife-Woman (115)
● Ann Spencer / Lady, Lady (116)
● Waverley T. Carmichael / It's All Through Life (116)
● Waverley T. Carmichael / Keep Me, Jesus, Keep Me (116)
● Timothy Thomas Fortune / We Know No More (117)
● Alex Rogers / The Rain Song (117)
● W. Clarence Jordan / What Is the Negro Doing? (119)
● Arna Bontemps / God Give to Men (120)
● Arna Bontemps / A Black Man Talks of Reaping (120)
● Arna Bontemps / The Day-Breakers (121)
● Gwendolyn Bennett / To a Dark Girl (121)
● Gwendolyn Bennett / Nocturne (121)
● Gwendolyn Bennett / Song (122)
● Clarissa Scott Delaney / Interim (123)
● Henrietta C. Ray / Dawn's Carol (123)
● Henrietta C. Ray / Charity (123)
● Blanche Taylor Dickinson / Poem [I know what happiness is] (124)
● Lewis Alexander / Africa (124)
● Lewis Alexander / Enchantment (125)
● Alston W. Burleigh / The Brave Son (126)
● C. Emily Frazier / Children at Easter (126)
● Idabelle Yeiser / Sunsets (127)
● Idabelle Yeiser / Symphonic Instruments (To my friends) (127)
● Idabelle Yeiser / At Twilight (128)

IV: Poems on Negro Life by Other Writers
● Madison Julius Cawein / The Man Hunt (129)
● Walt Whitman / I Sing the Body Electric [excerpt] (131)
● Walt Whitman / Ethiopia Salutes the Colors (132)
● James Oppenheim / The Slave (133)
● John Greenleaf Whittier / The Christian Slave (134)
● John Greenleaf Whittier / The Rendition (136)
● James Russell Lowell / Stanzas on Freedom (137)

V: Bibliography

● The anthology was originally compiled in 1930, according to James Edward Smethurst, who in his "The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946" (Oxford UP, 1999) gives the publication information as: "Trenton: Works Program Administration New Jersey, 1930."
● This revised edition of 1937 includes 143 poems (including 3 folk songs) by 64 African American writers and 7 poems by 5 white writers.
● The selection is largely derivative from earlier anthologies (as is some of the editorial matter) and there are numerous typographical errors in the text.

● The editors write in the original preface: "Without exhausting possibilities of selection, we have quoted in this anthology of Negro poets, fifty odd writers of verse that exhibit besides form, at least one fundamental quality of poetry, namely, passion" (Preface). [This is a direct echo of a sentence in the preface to Robert Kerlin's "Negro Poets and Their Poems" (1923): "Without exhausting the possibilities of selection I have quoted in this anthology of contemporary Negro poetry sixty odd writers of tolerable verse that exhibits, besides form, at least one fundamental quality of poetry, namely, passion" (xiii).]
● They continue: "This is prepared with the earnest hope that through the reading of this work, the ideals, hopes and aspirations of those to follow will be raised to a higher level and that this work will spur them on to the goal exemplified by the old Roman adage, 'Per Aspera Ad Astra!'" (Preface). [This, too, is an echo from Kerlin's preface, which begins: "'Ad astra per aspera'--that is the old Roman adage. Magnificent is it, and magnificiently is it being in these days exemplified by the American Negroes . . ." (xiii).]
● They conclude the original preface: "We want to acknowledge the assistance of the following: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Professor Sterling H. Brown of Howard University"

● The Preface to the Second Edition states, "Our 'Anthology of Negro Poetry' has met with a welcome generous beyond all expectation." This "new edition" is "altered, however, in important particulars": there is a bibliography at the end, "intended as an aid to those who wish to read further than this volume can carry them"; "Our obligations for suggestions which have borne fruit in this volume are numerous beyond any possibility of mentioning."
● The editors do give thanks, however, to Mrs. Elizabeth Denny Vann, Mrs. Margaret Porch Hamilton, and Mr. C. V. Girod. They add: "We are under special obligation to Miss Idabelle Yeiser for the use of three of her poems: 'Sunsets,' 'Symphonic Instruments,' and 'At Twilight.'"

● "The Crisis" (Feb. 1938): 48.
"This anthology published under the auspices of the WPA of New Jersey contains interesting material at a low cost, but it leans too heavily on the work of its predecessors, particularly on that of James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry, which the editors did not have the grace to include in the appended bibliography." [full text of review] [It is true that the editors have failed to include James Weldon Johnson's anthology in their bibliography, but this may have been an oversight: they acknowledge on p. 56 that they have taken Joshua H. Jones's "To a Skull" from Johnson's "Book of American Negro Poetry."]

● Pawley, James A. "The American Negro: A Reading List." Works Progress Administration (NJ), 1937:
"This recently compiled anthology is very nicely edited and contains selections from practically all of the Negro poets of consequence along with a brief biographical sketch of the majority of them" (15). [Pawley works in the same department as the editors of this anthology.]

● Jahn 1965: 217 (no. 2217)

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