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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WHITE THINGS, by ANNE SPENCER Poet's Biography
First Line: Most things are colorful things - the sky, earth, and sea
Last Line: "man-maker, make white!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Bannister, Anne Bethel Scales
Subject(s): African Americans; Negroes; American Blacks
First Line: Most things are colorful things - the sky, earth, and sea
Last Line: "man-maker, make white!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Bannister, Anne Bethel Scales
Subject(s): African Americans; Negroes; American Blacks
Most things are colorful things -- the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men; but the white are free!
White things are rare things; so rare, so rare
They stole from out a silvered world -- somewhere.
Finding earth-plains fair plains, save greenly grassed,
They strewed white feathers of cowardice, as they passed;
The golden stars with lances fine
The hills all red and darkened pine,
They blanched with their wand of power;
And turned the blood in a ruby rose
To a poor white poppy-flower.
They pryed a race of black, black men,
And burned them to ashes white; then,
Laughing, a young one claimed a skull,
For the skull of a black is white, not dull,
But a glistening awful thing
Made, it seems, for this ghoul to swing
In the face of God with all his might,
And swear by the hell that sired him:
"Man-maker, make white!"
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