I Am the American Negro (collection)

by Frank Marshall Davis

For works with similar titles, see I Am the American Negro.

The Book and the Author

I Am The American Negro is a collection of poetry written by Frank Marshall Davis since the appearance in September, 1935, of his first volume, Black Man's Verse, which drew high critical praise as excerpts from reviews, printed on the outside and inside back cover, indicate.

This volume offers a varied excursion into the realms of free verse. From the title poem, which is a poetic drama to be read and not acted, the subject matter goes into the grimly realistic and the lyrically passionate, ending in the section, "Ebony Under Granite" (continued from Black Man's Verse), inspired by the Greek Anthology.

I Am The American Negro belongs in the libraries of all literate persons, both black and white, who are interested in brilliant free verse and the reaction of a Midwestern Negro to the American scene.

The author, Frank Marshall Davis, is a former Kansan now living in Chicago where he is feature editor and a syndicated columnist for the Associated Negro Press.

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What critics said of

BLACK MAN'S VERSE

By Frank Marshall Davis

"Black Man's Verse unites sardonic realism and mysticism, a union here of cause and effect, not at all strange to any reader knowing Sandberg. Mr. Davis is embittered by American life, and at times seems to escape from it in dreams of Mandy Lou's loveliness, and of vestiges from an earlier, exotic Africa . . . The book's contribution is in its realism."

Sterling A. Brown, Opportunity

"No Negro poet — nor any white poet — has sung with as great force of the intellectual and spiritual bleakness of the black island which exists in dominantly white America. His singing is in a minor chord like music at a synagogue or keening at a wake."

Prof. C. E. Rogers, Kansas Industrialist

"Throughout he has stamped his own individuality in lines and frequently his experimental moods have caught the essence of an originality surcharged with a vigour of well rounded expression."

James O. Hopson, Crisis

"Frank Marshall Davis . . . has an etcher's touch and an acid bite to his vignettes of life that any 'proletarian poet' or Marxian critic might well envy and emulate . . . His social analysis is as accurate as his social description is trenchant."

Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke, Race, Summer, 1936

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I am the
AMERICAN NEGRO

By the same author

Black Man's Verse

I Am the
American
Negro

By Frank Marshall Davis

Black Cat Press Chicago, Illinois

1937

Copyright 1937, The Black Cat Press

First edition

Printed in the United States of America

To PROFESSOR C. E. ROGERS
of Kansas State College, whose rare friendship
is a valuable part of my few assets

FOREWARNING

Fairy words . . . a Pollyanna mindDo not roam these pages.InsideThere are coarse victualsA couch of rough boardsCompanions who seldom smileYetIt is the soul's abodeOf a Negro dreamerFor being blackIn my AmericaIs no rendezvousWith Venus . . .

Acknowledgement

A few of the poems in this volume appeared originally in the Kansas Magazine. Others have not previously been published

CONTENTS

I Am the American Negro		13
Dancing Gal		23
Flowers of Darkness		25
They All Had Grand Ideas		26
Christ Is a Dixie Nigger		28
Washington Park, Chicago		30
Note Left by a Suicide		37
To One Who Would Leave Me		39
'Mancipation Day		41
Notes On a Summer Night		43
Awakening		46
Come to Me		48
Modern Man — The Superman		51
Two Women		55
For Any Unborn Negro		55
"Onward Christian Soldiers"		56
Midsummer Morn		56

Ebony Under Granite

Moses Mitchell		59
Sam Jackson		60
Jonathan Wood		60
Cleo and Sarah Greeley		61
Benjamin Blakey		63
Nicodemus Perry		64
Mrs. Clifton Townsend		65
Editor Ralph Williamson		66
Frank Marshall Davis: Writer		68