While I am certain I have mentioned it before, it bears repeating that in these disturbing times I have deeply appreciated the voices of those of color who speak of a continuity between now and before that those of certain privileges are likely to miss.
For all the parallels that white folks like me can see to Nazi Germany, the United States has its own homegrown versions in the slave patrols of the Jim Crow era, which quite literally inspired the Nazi tactics that we remember.
For all that white folks like me lament that this isn’t who “America” is, Langston Hughes cries out across time itself: “America never was America to me… / There’s never been equality for me, / Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.’”
For all that many of us grew up with the adage “Those who failed to read history are doomed to repeat it,” we seem to find ourselves in a moment of repeating history — not because of some failed to read history, but because they did so and purposely learned the wrong lessons.
For all of these reasons and more, I’ve been revisiting my anthologies of African American poetry this month, and I found another that feels remarkably appropriate for our moment today.
Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889 and was a published poet before he came to the United States in 1912 to study at Tuskegee University, a HBCU. He was shocked at the racism he encountered and the segregation forced upon those living in Charleston; these topics quickly took over the subject matter of his poetry. In the aftermath of the “Red Summer” of white-on-black violence following WWI, McKay penned what would become his most famous poem, “If We Must Die.” Winston Churchill would read this poem in the House of Commons during WWII, and many British soldiers carried copies of it with them into battle. The publication of McKay’s best known volume of work, Harlem Shadows (1922), is generally regarded as one of the inaugural events of the Harlem Renaissance.
Among that collection is the following, simply titled: “The White House”
We do not have permission to publish the poem in its entirety online, you may read it at Poets.org by clicking here: The White House by Claude McKay
It begins with the lament,
“Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;”
And ends with the plea,
“By the grace and power of God, let us “keep our hearts inviolate against the poison of their hate.”
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Pastor Michael