Social Protest Lit.: Langston Hughes’ “Scottsboro”

A poem by Langston Hughes, Black American poet and writer, entitled “Scottsboro” from Book IV called “Out of The Depths.” This chapter is focused on man’s pursuit of remedy for social injustice:

8 BLACK BOYS IN A SOUTHERN JAIL

WORLD TURN PALE!

8 black boys and one white lie.

Is it too much to die?

Is it much to die when immortal feet,

March with down Time’s street,

When beyond steel bars sound the deathless drums

Like a mighty heart-beat as they come?

Who comes?

Christ,

Who fought alone,

John Brown.

That mad mob

That tore the Bastille down

Stone by stone.

Moses

Jeanne d’Arc

Dessalines

Nat Turner

Fighters for the free.

Lenin with the flag blood red.

(Not dead! Not dead! None of these is dead.)

Gandhi

Sandino

Evangelista, too,

To walk with you–

8 BLACK BOYS IN A SOUTHERN JAIL.

WORLD TURN PALE!

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