Poems of the Civil Rights Movement

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(see Submissions Policy).

The Forerunners

From the Freedom Movement

Freedom School Poems

About the Freedom Movement

The Forerunners

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

Robert Hayden
Frederick Douglas
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?

From the Freedom Movement

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

Bernice Johnson Reagon
Ella's Song
Dona Richards
Apology to Africa, undated.
Stephen Rose
The Stones Cried Out
Joseph Ruggerio
Dark is the Night
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

Freedom School Poems

Poems written by Freedom School students, Mississippi, 1964.
I am Mississippi Fed, Ida Ruth Griffin
The House of Liberty, Joyce Brown
Lonely, Wilma Byas
Fight on Little Children, Edith Moore
Our Largest and Smallest Cities, Nettie Rhodes
Who Am I?, Sandra Jo-Ann 0.
A Leader, Roosevelt Redmond
Isn't It Awful?, Edith Moore
A Negro Condition, Lillie Mae Powell
Why Do They Hate Us? What Has the Negro Done?, Florence Seymour
What Does Freedom Mean? Madeline McHugh
Because I'm Black, Ruth Phillips
I am a Negro, Rosalyn Waterhouse
Three Strikes to Freedom, Mary Zanders
Freedom in Mississippi, David Marsh
Why Did I My Don'ts, Sandra Ann Harris
Segregation Will Not Be Here Long, Allan Goodner
Don't Give A Subject, Shirley Ballard
Once I Wanted to Fill the Earth With Laughter, Lynda
Time, Shirley Ballard
Mr. Turnbow, Lorenzo Wesley
Nov. 22, 1963, Arelya J. Mitchell
Other Children, Airvester Bowman
Roads, Airvester Bowman
Life, People, the Mysteries of Time, Charlie Brown
The Wind, Cora Sanders
Spring, William Smith
Poem, M.C. Perry
Who What Dropped When?
Mine, Alice Jackson
Changing The American Stage, Elnora Fondren
The Voice of Freedom, Robert Lee
Say Freedom!, Mitchell M

About the Movement

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