Poetry from and about the Civil Rights Movement (original) (raw)

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
The Song of the Smoke

Sterling Brown (1903-1989)
Strong Men

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Saturday's Child
Incident

Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906)
We Wear the Mask
The Colored Soldiers
The Haunted Oak

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper(1825-1911)
The Slave Auction
The Slave Mother
Bury Me in a Free Land
Aunt Chloe's Politics

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Children's Rhymes
Cross
Comes the Colored Hour
Dreams
I, Too, Sing America
Let America Be America Again
Merry-Go-Round
Warning!
What Happens to a Dream Deferred?
Down Where I Am
Backlash Blues
I Dream a World

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
Fifty Years, 1863-1913
Lift Every Voice and Sing

Claude McKay (1891-1948)
America
White Houses
If We Must Die

Mike Quinn (Paul William Ryan), (1906-1947)
They Shall Not Die! (Scottsboro Boys)
These Are the Classwar Dead (S.F. General Strike, 1934)
He Said Fight
The Man in the Rain
Three Percent Own All the Wealth
Graduation Greetings
How Much for Spain? (Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
Why Down't You Laugh? (Nazi Germany)
Newsie
Little Boy Blue

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
Ain't I a Woman?

Chude Pam Allen (Pam Parker)
To Be Twenty Again
For Justice and For Love
Remembering
Wayne Yancey
Delois

Bob Beech
Christmas came early this year

Strider "Arkansas" Benston
Ode to Jimmy Lee
May Your Hands Always be Busy

Joan Dresner Bernstein
The Little Girl From Little Rock

Margaret Block
Vote or Die
If You Don't Vote, Don't Cry
Justice and Jive (A History Poem of American Justice)
For My Young Black Brothers

Nina Boal
Meridian Jail

Julian Bond
Look At That Girl
I Too, Hear America Singing
Poem about Connie Curry

Joyce Brown (16)
The House of Liberty

Charlie Cobb, Furrows (60-page booklet)
Furrows, spring '67
L.A. the Order of Things, August '65
Memory, summer '65
Lie Still Unhappiness Hush, spring '65
And If
Motto! summer '65
And Soft Sweet Breezes, spring '65
Night Storm, Atlanta spring '65
A Slave Song, May, '65
Birmingham 1963, winter '66
First Views of the Going, Brandon MS winter 1963
Lowndes County Staff Sketches, May 3, 1966
For Sammy Younge, winter '66
#80 Haiku, Tougaloo '66
Mobile 1964, March '66
In the Furrows of the World
Mekonsippi #1
To Vietnam, Hanoi April 1967
Ain't That a Groove! Atlanta

Peter Coppelman
Civil Rights Summer
Civil Rights March

Fatima Cortez-Todd
To Rest Safe and be Fed

Edward English (Selma AL student)
This is Africa
This is My Gloria
One-Two
Philadelphia is Freedom
Tent City
This is Patience

Charles Fager
On Meeting Mrs. Septima Poinsette Clark

Jerry Farber
The Liberals' Song

Sam Friedman
Mimeograph
Two-Two-Nineteen Sixty

Betty Gamble
A Mother's Plea

LuLu Westbrook Griffin
Americus, Georgia in Sixty Three
Memories of The Stockade
Po' Man
Be
Move On
Smile
Faith
Justice Let it Stand
Once Upon a Time
Martin L. King & Elvis, The "KING" Of ROCK
Struttin' Right Up
Discrimination Among Coloreds/Blacks the Shade of Skin Tone

Vincent Harding
Light in the Asphalt Jungle

Bruce Hartford
Mississippi Voter Rally
Grenada March #107

Casey Hayden
On Organizing

Dorie Ladner
Band of Brothers

Gloria Larry House
Selma, 1965

Will Inman
A Mirror to the South (for Emmett Louis Till)

Abdul Aziz Khaalis (Jan Leighton Triggs)
Mississippi Street Song in Hinds County
Parchman Cell
A Song for Charlie
1961 Jackson Safe House

Steve McNichols
A Moment of Silence

Tamam Tracy Moncur (Tracy Sims)
Will the Real America Please Stand!
Hey America "Put Some Respect on God's Name!"
This Little Light of Mine

Bob Moses
Deep Black 'Sippi Willie

Daphne Muse
Harriet, Her Nelson, and the North Star Kiss

Gregory Orr
The Demonstration
Solitary Confinement

Zellie Rainey Orr
We Are One
America

Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
There Are Those Like John (an ode to John Lewis)
She. Her. Hers. (homage to Ruth Bader Ginsberg)
Telling
Bob Moses... One of Us
The Vote
Sherrod! Our spirit leader
If All We Had Were Words
The Light Workers

Bernice Johnson Reagon
Ella's Song

Dona Richards
Apology to Africa, undated.

Stephen Rose
The Stones Cried Out

Joseph Ruggerio
Dark is the Night

J. Shetterly
Mississippi Love Song

Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner
fannie lou...the woman who

Jane Stembridge
Mrs. Hamer
The Children
Automation
The Flute
About Jesus

Maria Varela
Casey in New York (late 1970's)

Rita Walker
Poem by Rita Walker

Molly Lynn Watt
Dr. King Looked Out
Civil Rights Update
Ballad of Jimmie Lee Jackson
Captive
Race Riff
Fayette County Tennessee
Outside Agitator N*****-Lover Commie
Tennessee Road Signs 1963
Which Side Are You On?
Instructions at Rev. Reeb's Home (1965)
Billie Holiday Sings "Strange Fruit" (1958)
Defense Lawyer

Annette Jones White
Mass Meeting in Albany, Georgia
To Bernice Reagon (Revisited)
Looking Glass Self
The Patio Fishio
On Voting
SNCC and the Porches of Southwest Georgia
SNCC Reunion

Jim Williams
What Then?
A Keen for Medgar

Robert F. Williams
Pusher Man

Rob Wood
FREDM

Bob Zellner
To Vincent and Rosemarie Harding
Unsigned
Two Anti-Vietnam War poems

Nancy Levi Arnez
Why Don't You Love Us?
To Be Black in America
Keep Pushing
A Brown Child's Prayer
Birmingham
Stood Up
Laid Off Blues
Poverty Blues
What is a Negro?

Lynne Barnes
Sestina for the South

June Brindel
The Road From Selma

Nikki Giovanni
Rosa Parks

Angela Jackson
Miz Rosa Rides the Bus

June Jordan
Jim Crow: The Sequel
1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mike Kellin
Hartman Turnbow

Yusef Komunyakaa
Knights of the White Camellia & Deacons of Defense

Audre Lorde
Afterimages

Naomi Long Madgett
Alabama Centennial
Midway

C. Liegh McInnis
Bob Moses: Gardener of Minds
For Hollis Watkins (Slight Return)
Mississippi Courage: A Lighthouse to the World
For Freedom Summer
The Bridge (For Medgar at the Crossroads)
Put the Ghosts to Rest (for Rainey Pool)

Eve Merriam (1916-1992)
Poems About Race & Jim Crow
Yesterday's Rider
Jim Crow
The Liberal Candidate From Middleroad Speaks:
White Sister
Money Mississippi (Emmett Till)
Tuscaloosa Road (Autherine Lucy)
Poems About the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Bus Boycott
Montgomery Alabama
Tomorrow's Footsteps
Sunrise Morning
The Elderly Walking Woman

Beatrice M. Murphy (1908-1992)
To Any Negro Youth
Pledge of Allegiance
Disclaimer
Even Among Thieves
We Are Not Alone
Deadlines For Miracles
Negro Choir
Obituary

Sarah R.
Sarah R. on G's 80th

F. Farley Ragland
Sit Down, Chillun!

Richard C. Raymond
Dixie Definitions

Dudley Randall (1914-2000)
Ballad of Birmingham
Booker T. and W.E.B.

Afaa Michael Weaver
The Little Rock 9

Jacqueline Woodson
February 12, 1963