Kicking Down Color Lines, Busting through Glass Ceilings

It wasn't until I read Anthony Walton's article "Double-Bind: Three Women of the Harlem Renaissance" that I realized how truly absent the female voice has been from our contemporary understanding of the poetic Harlem Renaissance. And, it is not that it didn't exist. Quite the contrary. Many women lit up both page and stage with beautiful words of struggle, progress, and the human condition. It is only that their status as women, black women, at that (what Walton refers to as the "double bind") made it difficult for them to get the respect and acclaim they deserved.

Well, I will do my part to keep their legacy alive!!

Thanks to Walton for getting me hip to these three feminine voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Hope you enjoy these short but powerful piece! And remember, the best way to keep this train moving is to share the love. Pass these poems along.



Dead Fires
BY Jessie Redmon Fauset

If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!

Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white wake,
Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath
Than passion's death!

Black Woman
BY Georgia Douglas Johnson

Don’t knock at the door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!

Quatrains
BY Gwendolyn Bennett

1
Brushes and paints are all I have
To speak the music in my soul—
While silently there laughs at me
A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.

2
How strange that grass should sing—
Grass is so still a thing ...
And strange the swift surprise of snow
So soft it falls and slow.