Textarchiv - Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

Prejudice

mrbot — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:00:01 +0000

How strangely blind is prejudice, the Negro's greatest foe!
It never fails to see the wrong but naught of good can know.
'Tis blind to all that's lofty, yea, to truth it is opposed,
Degrading things will ope his eyes, while good will keep them closed.

How cruel, too, is prejudice! how wicked is the tongue!
The evils reign supremely there, the bad is ever sung;
With some the Negro needs a soul, with others he's a brute,
In silence those remaining live and naught of this dispute.

The schools it legislates against, in keeping Negroes down,
Whatever tends to elevate it meets it with a frown.
It gives to them the Jim Crow car and vessels on the sea;
It makes the stockade to exist and take their liberty.

It makes the press to vacillate up the Negro's name,
The pulpit makes a compromise with evil, for the same,
It makes the Pharaohs of today and seals them with its ban,
It strives to close the door of hope upon the Negro man.

It causes mobs to formulate, to come and go at will,
At morning, evening, noon or night, a Negro man to kill,
It brings injustice to the courts when Negro men are tried,
It wrings the ballot from their hands—a thousand wrongs beside.

It is the country's greatest curse, the nation's open sore,
It slowly saps the precious life, is poison to the core,
Such ravages gave certain death to nations in the past,
The same will lay this country low, its fondest hopes will blast.

It minimizes all that's good and magnifies the ill,
The devil's mission upon earth, it clamors to fulfill;
'Twas prejudice that caused the death of Christ upon the tree,
He knows the pangs that Negroes feel and gives them sympathy.

When men refuse to see the light a darkness is assured,
Such blindness comes upon the scene as never can be cured!
Contagious is the dread disease, for Negroes learn to view
The white man with suspicious eyes, but here's a thing that's new.

The Negro Problem of the land, and all the same entails,
Will be no more whene'er we find a sentiment prevails,
To bury prejudice so deep it never can arise
Till all the races of the earth shall meet above the skies.

'Twas God who made the Negro black, the reasons are His own
One blood the nations all the same, the facts are too well known,
He also made the Golden Rule, to use the neighbor well,
Shall prejudice among us dwell forever? who can tell?

Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

1907

Jim Crow Cars

mrbot — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:00:01 +0000

If within the cruel Southland you have chanced to take a ride,
You the Jim Crow cars have noticed, how they crush a Negro's pride,
How he pays a first class passage and a second class receives,
Gets the worst accommodations ev'ry friend of truth believes.

'Tis the rule that all conductors, in the service of the train,
Practice gross discriminations on the Negro—such is plain—
If a drunkard is a white man, at his mercy Negroes are,
Legalized humiliation is the Negro Jim Crow car.

'Tis a license given white men, they may go just where they please,
In the white man's car or Negro's will they move with perfect ease,
If complaint is made by Negroes the conductor will go out
Till the whites are through carousing, then he shows himself about.

They will often raise a riot, butcher up the Negroes there,
Unmolested will they quarrel, use their pistols,rant and swear,
They will smoke among the ladies though offensive the cigar;
'Tis the place to drink their whiskey, in the Negro Jim Crow car.

If a Negro shows resistance to his treatment by a tough,
At some station he's arrested for the same, though not enough,
He is thrashed or lynched or tortured as will please the demon's rage,
Mobbed, of course, by "unknown parties," thus is closed the darkened page.

If a lunatic is carried, white or black, it is the same,
Or a criminal is taken to the prison-house in shame,
In the Negro car he's ushered with the sheriff at his side,
Out of deference for white men in their car he scorns to ride.

We despise a Negro's manhood, says the Southland, and expect,
All supremacy for white men—black men's rights we'll not protect,
This the Negro bears with patience for the nation bows to might,
Wrong has borne aloft its colors disregarding what is right.

This is called a Christian nation, but we fail to understand,
How the teachings of the Bible can with such a system band;
Purest love that knows no evil can alone the story tell,
How to banish such abuses, how to treat a neighbor well.

Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

1907

The Peonage System

mrbot — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:00:01 +0000

The religious wars of Europe have been numbered with the past,
But a worse thing, bright America with clouds has overcast,
'Tis the heinous contract system that plantation life contains,
Worse than slavery's conditions in a land where freedom reigns.

Negroes forced in one roomed cabins, mother's from their children torn
All the day till dark of evening from the dawn of early morn,
Sweet affection, thrift and neatness, all that perfect homes would bring,
Yea, humanity is buried at command of money's king.

Shall the future of the Negro by the white man be suppressed,
In his forcing from the present all that makes the future best?
Shall the training of the children be neglected? passing strange
Things material for the morals of the Negro they exchange.

Oft we find an overseer with a gun and club and whip,
Who at night within the stockade locks the Negroes, lest they skip,
If they offer a resistance for their treatment in this cage,
They are clubed into submission in the overseer's rage.

Some are kidnapped for the stockade, others taken there for debt,
Fed with only bread and water and for more they dare not fret,
They are worked like beasts of burden and the story here is told,
Of the sacrifice of manhood to a god that's made of gold!

'Tis an open, open secret how the white man without pain,
Sells the evil one his conscience out of greed for earthly gain,
Barbarism can't surpass it, races cannot lower fall,
'Mid this great enlightened country money's king rules over all.

If a farm hand makes an effort in the schooling of himself,
Or a mother will persist in looking up her little elf,
They must leave the old plantation for a more congenial clime,
"No enlightenment for Negroes," planters say, " 'tis loss of time."

"Send to Africa the Negro," they have talked of such you know,
Like to England's Irish question, planters cannot let him go,
Hear the planter loudly singing, this the chorus of the song:
"Keep the 'niggers,' all the 'niggers' in the field where they belong!"

Now he pleads for better treatment, why dehumanize a race?
On the farm he's proved his service and there's none to take his place,
None to stand the heat of summer in the making of the crop,
Whites are taught to need his labor and they cannot learn to stop.

Sad, indeed, to find a nation, bowing down to money's might,
Sacrificing all that's noble, all that's beautiful and right,
"Righteousness exalts a nation," sin can only bring it shame,
Serve no other god, I warn you, in the God of heaven's name.

Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer

1907