Till All Doors Open Freely

As school doors in the South grudgingly open

Where eager ebon-faced youth enters,

In the faint echoes lingering on southern winds,

We hear the pistol-shot of a long curling whip;

The soft swish of the fan a black boy swings monotonously

Keeping the flies from the dinner table in the Big House--

He mutely sings, "I'll walk all over God's Heaven;"

The mumbling of the exhausted slave in his sleep--

"Swing low, sweet Chariot"--swing low in mercy.

We see the burden-bearers--meek--in the Sunday churches

Listening to the praises of a God of love and justice--

"All God's Children Got a Heaven."

School doors are opening grudgingly--

"Swing low, sweet Chariot" till all doors open freely.

To You Who Wear White Cloaks

Though we were given a darker chrysalis

To cloak our spirits, hide the white within,

No mandate said there need be an abyss

Unbridged between our souls, for our dark skin

Was given us by that same Father who

Cloaked you in white. Though you are fair of face,

Can you not see a brother smiling through

The covering He gave to every race?

Our hearts, with yours can hear Him when He calls;

Can feel the pulse-beat of all brother-men.

Come, let us batter down the blinding walls

Of race and creed and hate, for only then

Can we petition God to bid war cease,

And climb and reach, at last, the Mount of Peace.

With Hands That Are White

"Teacher?" I looked into great haunted eyes--
School was dismissed--Then small Lemuel said,
"Why an I black?" How those shadowed orbs pled--
Set in a face dark as ebony skies
Asking for stars--seeking answers to whys!
Seeing his soul reaching out to be fed
Fair as the lilies where fields knew His tread;
Feeling His presence, I gave these replies:

Heaven is kind; you will have no regrets.
Gently will Jesus, the Master of right,
Tender and loving--Not one He forgets--
Welcome you back to His Home of delight:
Gardens of lilies and frail violets ...
There you shall pick them with hands that are white.

Love-Wrought Miracle

Ebon faced
Lena envied Mary, fair
As the lilies blooming where
Jesus walked. Then Mary smiled
As she placed
Lena's hand within her own:
"Black and white,"--How sweet her tone!
"Each one is the Master's child."
Beauty graced
Phrases wrought a miracle:
Lena's soul felt beautiful.
Sun and shadow--primrose aisled--
Interlaced.

Dispel the Gloom

Although the Lord gave me a chrysalis

Of ebony that hides the white within,

He gave no mandate for the dark abyss

Between us. Through the blackness of a skin

He sees the heart, He listens--He, the King!

And hurls no dolorous fiat for a doom

That makes pariahs of a people. Fling

Aside all thoughts of hate--dispel the gloom!

This heart, with yours, hears well the clarion call,

The silent flashes from divinity;

It longs to batter down the blinding wall

Of race--assured that each is spirit-free;

For He, whose hands are scarred, knows every smart

And bids us walk as brothers--not apart.

The Lyric

Fourth in MFCP Clinic Poems, Oct. 1952