Song of My Soul: Poems by an American Man of Color to Commemorate the 2019 Harlem Renaissance Centennial

By Paul Evans

Paul Evans, a former Baltimore newspaperman, uses the power of poetry to present a unique look at the decency and respectability of black Americans' lives before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement in tribute to the Harlem Renaissance. However, Mr. Evans does not stop there. Uniquely, writing as a black man, he also offers poems that express his desire to see a nation that is inclusive and fair to all Americans, not overlooking the working-class white people who have been left out of Martin Luther King's dream.

The Harlem Renaissance has taken its rightful place alongside the many literary movements and eras that have comprised American Literature. Through expressive verse, Mr. Evans reflects on the simplicity of an earlier time in a black man's life such as tending a coal furnace, talking to the ice cream man, or in "A Colored Boy at the Ocean" when he writes, Ocean, ocean carry me away/I'm a little colored boy here at play/I care not where your waves might take me to go/As long as getting there is mighty awfully slow. He honors the spirited artists, musicians, and writers who created magic during a dazzling period in American culture.

As the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance approaches in 2019, Mr. Evans encourages a revisiting to this special time, resulting in a new appreciation of the importance of the work of the renaissance's writers and poets, in particular, whose work urged America to be what it says it is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 10, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595913091

Paul Evans

Paul S. Evans (PhD, University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto) is assistant professor of Old Testament at McMaster Divinity College.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Thursday’s Child

In Mr. Harry Truman’s Day

Rearing by Spock

That Big Ole Dog

The Old Lamplighter

In an Incubator

Naptime with the Radio

World of the Fifties

‘Painting the Roses Red’

The Hospital Stay

A Colored Boy at the Ocean

The Typewriter

Swinging the Swinging Bridge

‘Bright’n Up Genr’l Washin’ton’

Best-Loved China

Wet Pants

Tending the Coal Furnace

Thanks President Ike

I Better Speak

Howard Street

A Little Colored Boy

The Night’s White Knights

Jesus del Hospital

Little Lexington Street

Radio Days

Sunday, Ed Sullivan Night

Scouting Days

Damascus Road Sermon

‘You Know Better Than to Ask’

No Homework on Sundays

The Doctors’ Shoulders

Baking Day

Watermelon Time

Hot Spell

Breakfast Club

Electing Adlai

Always Busy?

I Was Born to Write

The Bell of St. Gregory

Old Say ’n Say

The Garden of Friendship

Racin’ Heart

Basement Books

Saturday Morning

Harlem Square

Children of the Fifties

Mysterious White Grandma

The Raging Bull

Carey Street

A Grandma’s Thoughts

Pain, Frustration, Humiliation,

and Embarrassment

The Hardware Store

Mr. and Mrs. High-Class Colored

Family Photo Album

Rockin’ Granny

Go a-Wanderin’

Urban Hike

Skating Days

Backyard Garden

Segregation

Old-Time Negro Teachers

Watching Sunday Traffic

The Park Promenade

Shaking History’s Hand

Hammering and Sawing Work

Three-Story Palace

A Tie and Jacket on Monday

A Boy’s Cat

Sunday School

Tender Shepherd

A Peeing Good Time

The Movie House

The Visiting Men

Mama’s Veil

Grandma Dressed for Dinner

Boys and Girls Together

Hopscotch Time

Jumpin’ Rope

My Bow Tie

What It Took to Forge This Nation

Poor White People: Forgotten Americans

‘The New Yorker’

The Colored Photographer

City Desk

Sunday Morning Tiptoe

Living Between Two Worlds

Those Little Mean Things

The Undertaker’s Bill

‘. . . On a Corner in Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania’

Howdy Doody Time

The Violin Victim

Looking Jody Sharp

Strawberries, Blackberries,

Raspberries, and Blueberries

Louisiana Ring

‘Good Night Shirt!’

Five Cents a Loaf

Library Smells

Marble Time

Uncle and Aunt Bountiful

Queen Mary Smoked

First Lady Mamie

Little Rock

Mrs. Roosevelt Discussed

Scrubbing the Front Steps

Pitiful Conditions

Seen but Not Heard

Native Americans Lost

Ancestors’ Blood

It’s My Home

Four November Days

So Long, Noble President Jack

Maids at the Bus Stop

Streets Paved with Gold

My God in Heaven Who Sits Above

Starched Shirts for Daddy

The Ice Cream Man

Her ‘Yes Indeedy’ Dress

A Widow’s Lament

My Life Was Different

A Woman of the Fifties

They Betrayed Our Ancestors

The Captain’s Table

Hit the Deck

The Galley’s Closed

Blackberries and Vanilla Ice Cream

You Don’t Have to Be Black

America at Work

Only for a Short Time

Seaport City

What’s a Black Man to Do?

Black Sapphos

After We’re Gone

A Writer Man

The Reporter

Niagara Falls

The Reverend Doctor Pastor Smith

Red Hands

Mother to Son in Trouble

The Body of Christ

Up from Segregation

I Remember Segregation

To Arms, All Men of Union

Making Gravy in the Navy

Black Grandpa, White Grandma: Both Brave

A Cat’s Winter Trip

Glad to Be Here

A Black Man’s Dick

Irish Pappy

In Sunday School

Feelin’ Groovy?

Beach Boy Black

A Tribute to Confederate Dead

Song of My Soul

I Believe

The News Desk

Elizabeth Murray Toliver

Big Band Days

Before I Go Down to Bed at Night

Mister Jim Bowie to the Rescue

As the Years Pass

Late City Edition

Blood of Our Ancestors

I Never Kissed Langston Hughes

That Sad Cad

If These Walls Could Talk

‘I Didn’t Raise You Dat Way’

Not Everyone Smoked, Turned On

Lafayette 7-0930

‘You Goin’ Outta Here’

What They Don’t See

Today’s Young White Men

I Know No Other Home

If I Had a Choice

Recital Day

A Night’s Stroll in Leningrad

No Racial Equality—Yet

Fuck That Shit!

Shout America Shout

Out of the House of Bondage

My Father’s God

For What Am I Waiting?

A-fearin’ Nat Turner

A People in Decline?

When I Listen to Country Music

Black-Tie Dance Blues

My Life’s Different Tune

Harvest Time

I Watch the World Pass Past My Door

‘I Care’

Bourbon Street Blues

Brother Sister

Meeting That Deadline

Who Will Lift the Flag and Carry On?

‘Your Most Obedient, Humble Servant, Sir’

Give Hatred the Boot

I Remember It Well

Say on My Old Comfortable Love

A Pie Kind of Guy

‘Hey Nigger, S’up?’

Don’t You Define Me; I’ll Define Me

Throw It Away

Callin’ Names

A Tapestry of Life

Over the Rainbow in a Closet

Faithful Church Organist

Songs of Zion

Oh Lord, What Art We Mortal Ones?

Absolutely Convinced

Miss Birdie’s Parlor

Lift Off Me

Would Have Been a Baker

Market Day

‘I Was Violated’

I Am Looking for Something Else

To An Aching Heart in Want of Relief

It’s Not about You or Me

What I Saw in My Grandmother’s Face

I Wonder What God Is Doing

I Can Have Only One Helping

I Can’t Read Them

Not Tragically Colored Either

I Would Speak to America

Patriot Dreams

The Fourth of July

At the End of My Day

Many Younger White People Are Different

Left Behind Too

If You Don’t Live It

Remembering the Harlem Renaissance

How Much Is Enough?

A Happy Song

Society Gal

Bicentennial Blues

Whatever Happened to Patty Hearst?

From the First Day

When Uncle Jesus Visited

Just Be

When Did Being Black Turn Vulgar?

Rubber Sole Journey

Nothing in Common with Them

An American Man of Color

Old Black Life

A Frock, Stockings, and Heels

We Have an Obligation

They’ll Pass On

I Missed the Southern Experience

Cries for You, Sighs for You, Dies for You

Drum Major for Justice

Extraordinary Under the Circumstances

Big Weekend Dance

The Midnight Oil Burns

Their Race Means Too Much

My Wife, My Mistress, and My Boyfriend

Suppose Integration Hadn’t Come

I Wanted Her the Way a Lesbian Would

Satin Skin on a Black Prince

‘Hi You Doin’ Honey Chile?’

Psalm 121

A Confederate Soldier’s Plea

The Down Low Lowdown

Such a Mighty Page

Mistress of the Night

Remembering President Lincoln

Is Love Enough?

John Paul’s College

I Remember Jim Crow

Old Miss Mel

City Life

It’s a Shame

Turrets

They Aren’t Talking Today

Graveyard Loud

One Night I Saw My Youth Depart

Groovy, Man, Just Groovy

Saturday Night in Heaven

Richardo Cory

I Am Still on Earth

Long, White Tee Shirts

National Portraits in the Gallery

Escape from Tyranny

‘I’ve Heard That Song Before’

Not Some Black Women’s Man, He Says?

From the Window Seat

You Have to Go On

Awake Drinking Hot Chocolate

Left Behind

Poor Working White Folks Need a Chance

American Spirit

Brokeback Blues

A Work in Progress

I’ve Been Reading Through My Journal

I Won’t Be Wasted

Look on the Bright Side of Your Life

I Count As I Recount

Say Goodbye with a Kiss

Such a Chance Meeting of You and Me

I Need Time to Reflect

If You Were a Poem

The Haberdashery Man

Have You Ever Heard a Rainbow Sing?

If Colors Could Talk

A Colored Man Talks to God

The Black Man’s Manhood Burden

Max

When I Look Out over America

God Smells Black Folks’ Stink Too

The Million-Man March

Look to the Younger White People

Hanging with My Crew

‘He’s Down in the Composing Room’

Couple Inches on the Obit Page

On the Death of a Black Man

Why Do I Do What I Do?

Tear-Stained, White-Haired Mother

Nigger Heaven

The Wife He Never Married

A Poem for Christmas

The Boys on the Left Side of the Class

The Last Generation

At the Dinner Table

The Tranquil Life

I Was Born in Segregation

Upon a Bright Night,

My Feline Friend Said to Me

The Wasted Black Male

All I Ever Wanted to Do Was Write

Rabbi Morton Mordecai

Deep, Silent Disappointment

When We Are Young

Even Steven

War! War! War!

Did I Say ‘Good Morning’?

Going Abroad at Home

Jesus Is a Right-on Dude

Boys’ Night Out

The Last Old, Angry Lion

A Native American’s Dream

Is My Life a Dream from Which I’ll Wake?

Huh?

Last Full Measure of Devotion

Playing on the Other Team

Chillin’ with the Younger Guys

A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation

For a Soldier Mourn

‘I Wish I Knew How to Quit You’

‘I’m Not Gonna Steal Your Pocketbook’

A Father’s Love

A Good-looking, Brown-Skin Man

God Is Waiting on Me

Night’s Toil Reward

Deputy Sheriff for the Colored

Ain’t Got No Ax to Grind

Traitors to the Race

Write On!

God Be Thanked for the Decent White People

‘When Will They Let Their White God Die?’

Look into My Face

The Way Poets Are

Photos

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All poetic wordings, phrasings, expressions, and ideas contained herein are solely those of the author’s imagination and thereby fictional. Reference to persons living or dead, beyond the author’s family, is coincidental.

To those who made

The Harlem Renaissance

what it was

and always will be

and

To my colleagues

at the

Baltimore Afro-American,

especially

Elizabeth Murphy Oliver, Madeline Wheeler Murphy,

Elizabeth Murphy Moss, John H. Murphy, III,

Frances Louise Murphy, II, Laura M. Phillips,

Ida Murphy Peters, Robert W. Matthews,

I. Henry Phillips, Sr., Gainor Hackney,

John J. Oliver, Sr., Sam Lacy, and Thomas Stockett

and at

The Sun, The Evening Sun, and The Sunday Sun

of Baltimore

and to

The administration, faculties, staff,

students, and alumni

of Morgan State University,

especially my colleagues

in the Department of English

and

To Jack, Jacqueline, Martin, and Bobby

May you guys rest in blessed peace,

and perpetual light shine upon you.

But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

—Zora Neale Hurston

from "How It Feels to Be

Colored Me"

Look ahead to a life worth living

Full of hope, full of faith, full of cheer

To a life that is made for giving

Without stint, without shame, without fear.

Look ahead to the One who leads us

To the Lord who guides our ways

We shall follow, follow, follow,

We shall follow Him all our days.

—Kenyon Emrys-Roberts

School Song

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to Professors Josette Darden-Obi and Cheryl Scott of the English Department of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC Essex) for their continuing interest in this work and to the following people:

Jeanie M. Lazerov, my friend of 42 years; also, Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey and Gary Reynolds, friends of many years; and Pearlie Ewell

Dr. Alvin Starr, campus dean, CCBC Essex, for allowing me to assume the teaching of American Literature in the English Department at CCBC Essex during his chairmanship

Dr. David Levering Lewis, professor of history at New York University, two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, and author of When Harlem Was in Vogue, and Jervis Anderson, formerly of The New Yorker, for his book This Was Harlem

I am especially grateful for the example Dr. Lewis set during my undergraduate years at Morgan State when he was my professor, and I served as his Teaching Assistant in my senior year. Thank you to Mr. Anderson for taking time from his duties at The New Yorker to talk with me when I called years ago. Both men’s books heightened my interest in The Harlem Renaissance.

Laurie Palmer, research librarian at The Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University, for kind and ready reference assistance early on

The staff of the Business Center@Park Circle in Baltimore, where I have had offices for many years, for cheerful and continuing facilities support

Ophthalmologists Stewart MacKay Wolff and John S. Minkowski for their professional care, individually, over many, many years

Preface

It’s a mid-Summer Saturday afternoon. I think about finally nearing the completion of this book as I sit on the steps of Langston Hughes’s house in Harlem. Today, the museum, which was his home for the last twenty years of his life, hasn’t opened yet. I take the time to reflect. I ponder upon Mr. Hughes and all the other artistic stalwarts, literary and otherwise, who trod the streets upon which I lovingly gaze, diverse participants in what the world would come to know as The Harlem Renaissance.

Song of My Soul, the title of my book, is not about The Harlem Renaissance. It is written to honor, to remember, and to pay tribute to the spirited artists, musicians, and writers, who, for one brief, shining moment, made creative magic during a dazzling period in American culture, mostly in Harlem but not exclusively confined there. My book is a sort of a poetic and autobiographic tribute recited through the eyes of a little colored boy, then a colored lad, then a colored teenager, and so on as was appropriate to the historical and cultural periods in which I was born in a segregated, but respectable, neighborhood in West Baltimore.

My task is to take my readers on a journey back in time to the everydayness, the ordinariness, the decency, and the good times—the frequent excellence—of black life before racial integration, using heightened, but simple and plain, language to create a work of art that anyone can enjoy and appreciate. I write about the everyday things in an earlier time in black life: tending a coal furnace, talking to the ice cream man, going to the hardware store, playing baseball, racing to Saturday movies, watching Howdy Doody, shaking Martin Luther King’s hand, and peeing behind trees. I also write about a few historical events in poetic form and a little about my current social observations on the changes in black culture since I was a child.

I am trying to use simple, everyday language to tell a story or part of a story that ordinary people can read and find illuminating and interesting, can find inviting. No matter one’s race, gender, or nationality, a reader can grasp the universal themes presented as I write as an American man of color early in the twenty-first century.

Writing this book is what I was born to do. I’ve come to understand somewhat the power of poetry. I write Song of My Soul for the peoples of America and beyond, no matter their race or ethnicity, to give them a literary and historical perspective on our national story through the eyes of a man of color who uses poetry to tell his journey.

I finally have come to realize, to understand with amazing joy, that The Harlem Renaissance did not die. It just took a rest.

Some time of my life, I bemoaned having missed that great literary experience. I didn’t, not really. The renaissance wasn’t to be confined to a time and place. It didn’t belong only to the artists of that period. It belonged to them. Yet, it continues to belong to everyone who would ever follow them. Earlier writers, artists, and musicians immortalized their efforts.

The Harlem Renaissance was a literary and cultural expression that manifested itself during a particular historical time and branched out, moved on, and lived in other forms, in other places, and in other ways, even until today. The writers and poets were memorable people with a talent for artistic expression and a passion to use written and spoken language, art, and music to create ever-existing artistic impressions.

Utilizing the genre of poetry to express myself and to contribute in some small latter-day way to the renaissance, as its centennial approaches, diverges somewhat from the years I spent as a Baltimore journalist reporting and commenting on local and national politics at the Baltimore Afro-American and at The Sun.

Yet, such utilization eventually dovetails with my experiences as a college teacher. As I sit on Mr. Hughes’s steps, often turning my head back to look at his house, I recall the time the idea for my book originated nearly seven years ago. The last of my American literature students had left class, and I remained to reflect upon the lesson. My unwillingness to relinquish the spirit and energy that encouraged The Harlem Renaissance inspired me to write this book.

Just what, I asked myself six years ago when I commenced my poetic odyssey, am I trying to do in the pages ahead?

I am trying to encourage a revisiting of The Harlem Renaissance by Americans and the wider global society, as its centennial comes in 2019, to see what might be learned and applied to present-day American literary, artistic, musical, and intellectual life at home and beyond our borders.

I am trying to bring closure to my earlier segregated life and to move on with the racially decent younger people of all ethnicities whom I encounter, being mindful that I am one person—in the last generations of older black Americans—who clearly remembers the nation’s racially segregated past and who witnesses the damage it continues to inflict on humanity, especially on America.

I am trying to wrench some young black Americans away from the deep cynicism and racial ugliness that polarizes the country by having my work vigorously emphasize that there are good and bad in every group, and immense opportunities are still available for all. The streets of America are, indeed, paved in gold.

I am trying to offer an opus of inspiration, a work of encouragement, to the discouraged and downtrodden black people of America, especially the forgotten urban, young black men. Will Song of My Soul sear through their hearts, minds, and spirits and offer them the hope they need to make better lives for themselves and walk humbly and righteously in the sight of God?

In short, I am trying—in my time and in my way—to follow in the proud tradition of American poets of color who used their literary gifts to blow freedom’s horn and to sing its songs, never, ever forgetting the many sacrifices made and privations endured by our black ancestors who are now at rest.

Now, might I say that I am deeply appreciative for the care and watchfulness God has extended to me over the six years I have labored upon this work and for all the previous years of my life?

Paul Fairfax Evans

New York City

August 2007

Baltimore

December 2007

August 2011

Book One

Thursday’s Child

Thursday’s birthed a baby, a boy: bright-eyed and beaming.

His first sweetly piercing bellows are bent on lassoing attention

Moments after an auspicious, awfully anticipated arrival.

He yawns merrily, contentedly, perhaps even timidly,

Squinting tentatively at the admiring, adoring faces

Hovering above—Of a sudden, he frowns and grimaces sharply.

Tiny eyes focus on another face, the specter face

Of Jim Crow, leering viciously almost out of sight,

Unseen—A grotesque ghoul of a guy is he,

Grinning his sickly sweet smile when opportune,

Staring just over the edge of the grey metal basinet,

Licking his cracked, callous lips contemptuously.

Thursday’s child dreamed of rainbows with overflowing

Pots of chocolate gold at the end, vanilla ice cream,

Strawberry shortcake, marble games, baseball cards,

Jump rope, dodge ball, tall, cool glasses of lemonade,

And boundless cones of flavored ice on a Summer’s day,

But Jim Crow had other plans, shadowy, sinister plans of obstacles,

Delays, roadblocks, and humiliations, putdowns,

Maneuverings, adversities, and tribulations.

Thursday’s babe had visions of hopscotch, Hardy Boys books,

Coonskin hats, gun duels, watermelon seeds spitting,

Comic books deliciously read, and Scout trips remembered,

But ole Jim Crow had other plans, plans of eating

The dust and bile, the exhaust of life, ingested

From the back of the line or the bottom of the barrel.

Plans of delay had he, devious plans of slighting,

Plans of ignoring, plans of overlooking and passing by,

Plans of devious embarrassment and sly frustration.

Thursday’s child had visions of cinnamon rolls and

Baseball games and croquet on lawns broad and green.

Ole Crow Jim had other plans, other dreams: plans

Of interposition, dreams of nullification, disruption

And aggravation, disrespectful dispatching to the rear.

Thursday’s child had visions of amusement park rides,

YMCA swimming days, and baseball crowds’ fun.

Jim Crow had other miserable plans, other dreams:

Plans of condescension, paternalism, and stereotyping.

Thursday’s child had visions of Superman, Clarabell,

Spin and Marty, Sky King, Fury, and Mickey Mouse.

Jim Crow had other plans, overt plans of social barriers

And backroom schemes, out-of-control vicious crowds milling,

Spewing hate and vicious plans of separate but equal forever.

Thursday’s child had visions of heights fairly reached,

Battles won, cheers’ fun, and victories’ sunshine come.

Jim Crow had other plans of literary tests and poll taxes.

Thursday’s child had dreams of high school proms,

Donning a classy white sport coat with a pink carnation.

Jim Crow, though, had other plans, plans of vicious, snarling dogs

And fire hose sprayings that set people praying.

Thursday’s brown-boy lad saw a vision, one in the cemetery of time,

Of burying old Jim Crow, the cruelest symbol of national

Racial strife. Good riddance, you notorious wretch of a bird.

Glad you’re gone.

Your stay was way too long.

In Mr. Harry Truman’s Day

In Mr. Harry Truman’s day,

Baby boomers were born with optimistic expectations.

In Mr. Harry Truman’s day,

Sunday morning christenings brought hearty congratulations.

In Mr. Harry Truman’s day,