#45, April 10th, 2004
Easter 1911
(An arrangement of an editorial in The Crisis, Easter 1911)
The land lay smiling in spring splendor,
heavy with verdure,
gleaming with glad sunshine.
Athwart it
fell the dark shadow
of a toiling man,
great of limb
and black,
thick of countenance
and hardhaired.
His face was half-hopeless,
half vacant,
with only a faint gleam
of something dead
and awakening
deep in his deep-set eyes.
His feet were chained,
his neck yoked,
his body scarred.
They that had driven him
through the thick forest
threateningly
were now afraid of him:
they feared the reproach
of his dumb,
low-burning eyes;
they feared the half articulate sounds
from his moving lips,
and saw with terror
the slow, steady growth
of his body
– that great,
black
undying body.
And so they conspired to kill him,
– lying to his ears,
crucifying his soul,
until he bent and bowed
and, heavy with his weakness, fell
laying his mighty length
in stupor along the earth.
And the earth trembled.
Sweating
and deep of breath
the pale-faced murderers
worked and delved,
digging a cavernous grave
and walling it with Oppression.
Then shame-faced
yet grim,
they turned northward.
At daybreak
they stood upon the hills of God,
with faces white and good,
crying:
“Come, O brothers,
Northern brothers,
the thing that hindered our love is dead,
– dead, dead, long dead.”
The brothers of the North came trooping,
oily tongued,
unctuous and rich,
yet they of the North and South
looked not each other in the eye,
but slunk along false smiling.
One who was timid said,
“O, Brother South,
I hear the chains.”
But the South answered:
“Nay, that is the chiming
of Negro school bells.”
Yet another, quibbling,
found his mouth:
“Did the Thing die happy?”
The South choked and muttered:
“Happy, so happy,
and praising his Master,
beside his best friends.”
“But, Brother,
your hands are bloody,”
quavered a third.
“The blood of the offering
burned at the stake
for the culture and supremacy
of our noble race.”
Then hastily
the South said in a chorus,
as if to forestall reply:
“See where we have laid him,”
and they pointed to a grave
walled with Oppression.
But suddenly
the world was wings
and the voice of an Angel,
the Angel of Resurrection,
beat like a mighty wind
athwart their ears
crying:
“He is not here –
He is risen.”
Risen above half his ignorance;
Risen to more than infinite property;
Risen to a new literature
and the glimmer of a new art;
Risen to a dawning determination to be free;
Risen to a greater ideal of humanity;
Risen to a just world where people can see.