#40, January 24, 2004

Traversing Clio (9)

Atlanta Warrior

Throughout the night of September 22nd and 23rd, 1906, a race riot occurred in Atlanta, during which a mob of ten thousand white Southerners (perhaps egged on by a stage performance of Reverend Thomas Dixon's The Clansman) assaulted any African American they could lay their hands on. W.E.B. Du Bois made his way to Atlanta as soon as he heard about the riot and wrote "A Litany of Atlanta" during the journey. That text is the starting point for this poem.

Atlanta Warrior

Atlanta warrior,

You nurse the world in crime

and feed it on injustice;

You ravish and debauch

the mother as your mistress;

You raise a divided city

and from her loins springs hate;

You sate the greed of greedy men,

while others starve --

assigned their fate.

Atlanta Warrior,

Bewildered we are passion-tossed

and fight the message from your steeple;

Mad with the loud avenging madness

of a mobbed and murdered people.

From the leagued-lying of despot and of brute

– Deliver us!

From lust of body and lust of blood

– Deliver us!

From lust of power and lust of good

– Deliver us!

Atlanta Warrior,

You are a pale, bloodless, heartless thing

And from you we must be removed!