FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 18, 2001
CONTACT: Yemisi Jimoh, assistant professor of English(501)575-4301, [email protected]
Allison Hogge, science and research communications officer(501)575-5555, [email protected]
NOTE: Poems mentioned in the release are copied at end.
UA PROFESSOR STUDIES AFRICAN AMERICAN PATRIOTISM AND POETRY
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A presentation from University of Arkansas researcher Yemisi Jimoh examines African American poetry produced between the two world wars and finds that for many, the American dream was a dream deferred.
According to Jimoh, assistant professor of English, African American poetry written between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second portrayed an era in which the failure of the American ideal became starkly evident -- particularly to African American veterans.
"The black soldiers who participated in these wars risked their lives to protect the freedoms of other people. Yet when they returned to the United States, they returned to a home in which their own freedoms were severely limited," Jimoh said. "That's an enormous contradiction and one that was strongly felt throughout the African American population."
Jimoh presents her study, titled "The Space between Patriotism and African American Poetry," on Saturday, May 19, at The Space Between Conference. This interdisciplinary conference -- taking place at the Center for Continuing Education in Fayetteville -- has gathered scholars from as far away as Yale, Cambridge and the University of Vienna to discuss the literature, art and culture that emerged between the two world wars.
Part of a seminar called "Beyond American Nationalism," Jimoh's presentation focuses on the works of well-known African American writers Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks. Each of these poets possess a different background, voice and style, but their portrayals of war and returning veterans show undeniable similarities, Jimoh said.
"The poems express an ironic patriotism -- a longing to live in the ideal America. And yet the poems show how far short of the ideal America has fallen," she explained. "The wartime era promoted a hope that people -- even African Americans -- bought into. That hope quickly turned to disappointment."
Claude McKay illustrates the disparity between the real America and the American ideal in his poem "If We Must Die," Jimoh said. On the surface, the sonnet seems a rally to soldiers, entreating men to die bravely in the fight against their vicious foe. But published in 1919, the poem also responds to the "Bloody Summer" of that year-- the violent culmination of months of racist attacks against African Americans.
This double meaning illustrates the paradox that many black veterans faced after their return from war: the bewildering sense that they were forced to fight both for their country and against it.
It was a contradiction not lost on later poets. Brooks and Hughes both wrote poems from veterans' perspectives. In her work "Negro Hero," Brooks makes a connection between the black soldiers' disappointment at the end of World War I and the repetition of that disappointment after World War II -- two generations for whom the nation failed to make good on its promise of freedom and justice, Jimoh observed.
Yet in spite of the disappointment, the injustice, Jimoh finds that African American poets continued to express hope. They continued to believe in the vision of America as a land of freedom and equality. While pointing out the nation's flaws, they also urged it to live up to its own ideals.
In "Let America be America Again," Hughes writes: "O, let American be America again -- / The land that never has been yet -- / And yet must be -- the land where every man is free." In spite of oppression, African American poets showed a remarkable optimism.
While the majority of Americans surged with nationalist sentiment, African Americans expressed a more subdued form of patriotism -- one founded less on pride and more on the promise and the potential of their nation.
"There's a good reason for studying this literature," Jimoh said. "The poems they wrote, the lives they lived between the wars, all that reminds us how easy it is to fall short of our own ideals. How easy, that is, and how devastating."
# # #
If We Must Die (1919)
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
-- Claude McKay
Negro Hero (1945)
I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath.(When I think of this, I do not worry about a few Chipped teeth.)
It is good I gave glory, it is good I put gold on their name.Or there would have been spikes in the afterward hands.But let us speak only of my success and the pictures in the Caucasian dailiesAs well as the Negro weeklies. For I am a gem.(They are not concerned that it was hardly The Enemy my fight was against But them.)
It was a tall time. And of course my blood wasBoiling about in my head and straining and howling and singing me on.Of course I was rolled on wheels of my boy itch to get at the gun.Of course all the delicate rehearsal shots of my childhood massed in mirage before me.Of course I was childAnd my first swallow of the liquor of battle bleeding black air dying and demon noiseMade me wild.
It was kinder than that, though, and I showed like a banner my kindness.I loved. And a man will guard when he loves.Their white-gowned democracy was my fair lady.With her knife lying cold, straight, in the softness of her sweet-flowing sleeve.But for the sake of the dear smiling mouth and the stuttered promise I toyed with my life.I threw back! -- I would not rememberEntirely the knife.
Still -- am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright enough to be spilled,Was my constant back-question -- are they clearOn this? Or do I intrude even now?Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to killFor them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides to themIn the galley still?
(In a southern city a white man saidIndeed, I'd rather be dead;Indeed, I'd rather be shot in the headOr ridden to waste on the back of a floodThan saved by the drop of a black man's blood.)
Naturally, the important thing is, I helped to save them, them and a part of their democracy.Even if I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to do that for them.And I am feeling well and settled in myself because I believe it was a good job,Despite this possible horror: that they might prefer thePreservations of their law in all its sick dignity and their knivesTo the continuation of their creedAnd their lives.
-- Gwendolyn Brooks
Let America be America Again (1936)
Let America be America again.Let it be the dream it used to be.Let it be the pioneer on the plainSeeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--Let it be that great strong land of loveWhere never kings connive nor tyrants schemeThat any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where LibertyIs crowned with no false patriotic wreath,But opportunity is real, and life is free,Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.I am the red man driven from the land,I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--And finding only the same old stupid planOf dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,Tangled in that ancient endless chainOf profit, power, gain, of grab the land!Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!Of work the men! Of take the pay!Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.I am the worker sold to the machine.I am the Negro, servant to you all.I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--Hungry yet today despite the dream.Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!I am the man who never got ahead,The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dreamIn the Old World while still a serf of kings,Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,That even yet its mighty daring singsIn every brick and stone, in every furrow turnedThat's made America the land it has become.O, I'm the man who sailed those early seasIn search of what I meant to be my home--For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,And torn from Black Africa's strand I cameTo build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?Surely not me? The millions on relief today?The millions shot down when we strike?The millions who have nothing for our pay?For all the dreams we've dreamedAnd all the songs we've sungAnd all the hopes we've heldAnd all the flags we've hung,The millions who have nothing for our pay--Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--The land that never has been yet--And yet must be--the land where every man is free.The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--Who made America,Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--The steel of freedom does not stain.From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,We must take back our land again,America!
O, yes,I say it plain,America never was America to me,And yet I swear this oath--America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,We, the people, must redeemThe land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.The mountains and the endless plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states--And make America again!
-- Langston Hughes
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