Content note: An American book of 1920 that uses the racial terms of its day and describes lynching, the East St. Louis riot of 1917 and other racial violence. Shown as printed. This object is shown as it was published. Why
(A Reply to Rudyard Kipling.)
By HUBERT H. HARRISON
Take up the Black Man’s burden— Send forth the worst ye breed, And bind our sons in shackles To serve your selfish greed; To wait in heavy harness Be-devilled and beguiled Until the Fates remove you From a world you have defiled.
Take up the Black Man’s burden— Your lies may still abide To veil the threat of terror And check our racial pride; Your cannon, church and courthouse May still our sons constrain To seek the white man’s profit And work the white man’s gain.
Take up the Black Man’s burden— Reach out and hog the earth, And leave your workers hungry In the country of their birth; Then, when your goal is nearest, The end for which you fought, Watch other’s trained efficiency Bring all your hope to naught.
Take up the Black Man’s burden Reduce their chiefs and kings To toil of serf and sweeper The lot of common things: Sodden their soil with slaughter, Ravish their lands with lead; Go, sign them with your living And seal them with your dead.
Take up the Black Man’s burden— And reap your old reward: The curse of those ye cozen, The hate of those ye barred From your Canadian cities And your Australian ports; And when they ask for meat and drink Go, girdle them with forts.
Take up the Black Man’s burden— Ye cannot stoop to less. Will not your fraud of “freedom” Still cloak your greediness? But, by the gods ye worship, And by the deeds ye do, These silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the Black Man’s burden— Until the tale is told, Until the balances of hate Bear down the beam of gold. And while ye wait remember That justice, though delayed, Will hold you as her debtor Till the Black Man’s debt is paid.
When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World, Hubert H. Harrison. Published in New York in 1920 by the Porro Press, so in the public domain in the United States; Project Gutenberg records the original publication and marks it public domain in the USA. Harrison died in 1927. Provenance and rights.