“Although a citizen of
the United States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an
inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are
possible. The black is constantly being
censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and
professional conscience and for his tendency toward undue familiarity. The
vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American who has to repress
them sternly.”
—“Secret Information Concerning
Black American Troops,” sent August 7, 1918 from Colonel J.L.A.
Linard with the A.E.F. to the French Army. Later
published by W.E.B. DuBois in the Crisis,
May 1919, pp. 16-18.
Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. |
Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. has been described as a “forerunner
of the African American cultural renaissance of the 1920s,”* and the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance notes
that his poetry and one-act play On the
Fields of France provide an
important contribution to First World War literature. Cotter’s poem “O Little David, Play on Your
Harp” uses a well-known African-American spiritual to frame the oppression and
misery of war, genocide, and racism. You
can listen here to a 1919
recording of the song performed by Lt. Noble Sissle and Lt.
James Reese Europe of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters.
O Little David, Play on Your Harp
O Little David, play
on your harp,
That ivory harp with the golden strings
And sing as you did in Jewry Land,
Of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love
And the Coming Christ Immanuel.
O Little David, play on your harp.
That ivory harp with the golden strings
And sing as you did in Jewry Land,
Of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love
And the Coming Christ Immanuel.
O Little David, play on your harp.
A seething world is gone stark mad;
And is drunk with the blood,
Gorged with the flesh,
Blinded with the ashes
Of her millions of dead.
From out it all and over all
There stands, years old and fully grown,
A monster in the guise of man.
He is of war and not of war;
Born in peace,
Nurtured in arrogant pride and greed,
World-creature is he and native to no land.
And war itself is merciful
When measured by his deeds.
Beneath the Crescent
Lie a people maimed;
Their only sin—
That they worship God.
On Russia’s steppes
Is a race in tears;
Their one offense—
That they would be themselves.
On Flanders plains
Is a nation raped;
A bleeding gift
Of “Kultur’s” conquering creed.
And in every land
Are black folk scourged;
Their only crime—
That they dare be men.
Gorged with the flesh,
Blinded with the ashes
Of her millions of dead.
From out it all and over all
There stands, years old and fully grown,
A monster in the guise of man.
He is of war and not of war;
Born in peace,
Nurtured in arrogant pride and greed,
World-creature is he and native to no land.
And war itself is merciful
When measured by his deeds.
Beneath the Crescent
Lie a people maimed;
Their only sin—
That they worship God.
On Russia’s steppes
Is a race in tears;
Crisis, June 1918 |
That they would be themselves.
On Flanders plains
Is a nation raped;
A bleeding gift
Of “Kultur’s” conquering creed.
And in every land
Are black folk scourged;
Their only crime—
That they dare be men.
O Little David, play
on your harp,
That ivory harp with the golden strings;
And psalm anew your songs of Peace,
Of the soothing calm of a Brotherly Love,
And the saving grace of a Mighty God.
O Little David, play on your harp.
That ivory harp with the golden strings;
And psalm anew your songs of Peace,
Of the soothing calm of a Brotherly Love,
And the saving grace of a Mighty God.
O Little David, play on your harp.
—Joseph
Seamon Cotter, Jr.
The celebratory refrain of the Negro spiritual contrasts
sharply with a “seething world” that has “gone stark mad.”** Spiraling out of
control, the world at war is drunk on blood, sated by the decaying bodies of
the dead, and blinded by the ashes of destruction.
Yet bigger than the war and more terrible than even its
slaughter, a monster “of war and not of war” towers over all. This fiend, born
in peace, raised by pride, and fed by greed, is a citizen of every nation, and
he wears a human disguise. In the Ottoman Empire (“beneath the Crescent”), he
has directed the massacre of the Armenians; in Russia’s pogroms, he has murdered
thousands of Jews; and he has brutally commanded German atrocities in occupied
Belgium. Cotter’s poem unites these victims of deadly prejudice with blacks who
are whipped and beaten “in every land”; their only crime is daring to believe
themselves fully human.
Many black Americans hoped the war that was to “make the
world safe for democracy” would also address the racism that was prevalent in
America. In “O Little David,” Cotter challenges his audience to acknowledge that the enemy
within, the “monster in the guise of man,” is as terrible a foe as any to be
encountered on the battlefields of Europe.
*James Robert
Payne, “Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., The
Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford, 2001, p. 90.
**The subject of the song, however, is relevant to the poem’s
message. David’s harp playing was commanded by King Saul, who employed the boy
to soothe his mad rages (I Samuel 16), and the young shepherd shocked Israel’s army with his courage
and skill in fighting the colossal Goliath (I Samuel 17).
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