Anthologies of African American Writing

Negro Songs: An Anthology

"Negro Songs: An Anthology." Ed. Clement Woods. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius, 1924. 64 pp. (Little Blue Book, no. 626)

[Clement Wood] / Introduction (3)
● Jupiter Hammon / An Evening Thought (9)
● Phillis Wheatley / Imagination (9)
● Phillis Wheatley / To Maecenas (10)
● Phillis Wheatley / His Excellency Gen. Washington (10)
● Negro Spirituals / Freedom (11)
● Negro Spirituals / De Gospel Train (11)
● Negro Spirituals / Hard Trials (12)
● Negro Spirituals / No Hiding Place (13)
● Negro Spirituals / Better Mind, Sister (13)
● Negro Spirituals / I Lay Dis Body Down (14)
● Negro Spirituals / You May Bury Me in De East (15)
● Negro Spirituals / Deep River (15)
● Negro Spirituals / Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (15)
● Negro Spirituals / Go Down, Moses (16)
● Negro Folk Verses / Love Is Just a Thing of Fancy (17)
● Negro Folk Verses / Jaybird and Bullfrog (17)
● Negro Folk Verses / Brag and Boast (17)
● Negro Folk Verses / Aspiration (17)
● Negro Folk Verses / Tails (18)
● Negro Folk Verses / Simon Slick's Mule (18)
● Negro Folk Verses / As I Wuz Ridin' By (18)
● Negro Folk Verses / She Hug Me an' She Kiss Me (19)
● Negro Folk Verses / The Newly Weds (19)
● Negro Folk Verses / Master Killed a Big Bull (20)
● Negro Folk Verses / Prayer (20)
● Negro Folk Verses / An' He Never Will (20)
● Negro Folk Verses / I Would Rather Be a Negro (21)
● Negro Folk Verses / Promises of Freedom (21)
● Negro Folk Verses / Run, Nigger, Run (22)
● Negro Folk Verses / Die in the Pig-Pen Fighting (22)
● Negro Folk Verses / Jubilee (22)
● James Madison Bell / Progress of Liberty (23)
● Albery A. Whitman / The Rape of Florida [excerpt] (24)
● George M. McClellan / A Butterfly in Church (25)
● George M. McClellan / The Feet of Judas (25)
● Joseph S. Cotter [Sr.] / The Don't-Care Negro (26)
● John W. Holloway / Calling the Doctor (27)
● James Edwin Campbell / De Cunjah Man (29)
● James D. Corrothers / At the Closed Gate (30)
● James Weldon Johnson / Fifty Years [excerpt] (31)
● James Weldon Johnson / To America (31)
● James Weldon Johnson / The Black Mammy (32)
● James Weldon Johnson / Mother Night (32)
● James Weldon Johnson / Beauty Never Old (33)
● James Weldon Johnson / An Explanation (33)
● James Weldon Johnson / The Creation (A Negro Sermon) [excerpt] (34)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Precedent (36)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Theology (36)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Harriet Beecher Stowe (36)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / On An Old Book (37)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Lovers' Lane (37)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Angelina (39)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / Compensation (40)
● Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson / I Sit and Sew (40)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Sic Vita (41)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / Del Cascar (42)
● William Stanley Braithwaite / It's a Long Way (43)
● Lucian B. Watkins / A Prayer of the Race (43)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / Song (44)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / My People (44)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / So Much (45)
● Charles Bertram Johnson / Serenity (45)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / Tuskegee (46)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / The Teacher (46)
● Angelina Grimke / A Winter Twilight (47)
● Ray G. Dandridge / The Poet (47)
● Ray G. Dandridge / Zalka Peetruza (Who Was Christened Lucy Jane) (48)
● R. Nathaniel Dett / The Rubinstein Etude (48)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / Sorrow Singers (49)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Passing of the Ex-Slave (49)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / Little Son (50)
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Suppliant (50)
● Roscoe C. Jamison / The Negro Soldiers (51)
● Walter E. Hawkins / Credo (52)
● Edward Smythe Jones / Flag of the Free (52)
● Fenton Johnson / Tired (54)
● Claude McKay / America (54)
● Claude McKay / The Wild Goat (55)
● Claude McKay / Enslaved (55)
● Claude McKay / On the Road (56)
● Claude McKay / Rest in Peace (56)
● Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer (57)
● Claude McKay / The Lynching (58)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die (58)
● Waverly [sic] T. Carmichael / Keep Me, Jesus (59)
● Waverly [sic] T. Carmichael / The Day of Repentance (59)
● Jessie R. Fauset / La Vie C'Est La Vie (60)
● Jessie R. Fauset / Dead Fires (61)
● Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. / The Band of Gideon (61)

● Includes 89 items: 27 spirituals and folk songs and the rest by 28 authors
● Includes an introduction by the editor and a brief biographical headnote at the start of the selection from each author.

● A bio of the editor, Clement Wood (1888-1950), is available online at "Alabama Authors"

Wood was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and graduated from the University of Alabama in1909 before getting a degree from Yale Law School in 1911. He moved to Birmingham and became chief magistrate in the Central Recorders Court in 1913. He also became active in politics, running for mayor as a Socialist. Having fallen foul of the local political establishment, he was removed from his judicial position for "lack of judicial temperament." He moved to New York City, where he was active as an atheist, a socialist, a writer, and an educator. This anthology was part of the "Little Blue Book" pamphlets, "a series aimed at the American working class" and to which Wood contributed some seventy volumes (Foster Dickson. "Disrupters & Interlopers: Clement Wood." blog. 15 May 2019).

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