African American troops near Verdun 1918 (Library of Congress cph 3c16442) |
In 1920, the Dunbar
Entertainer published “In Flanders Fields: An Echo,” a poem that challenged
Americans to uphold the light of justice and extinguish the burning crosses and
flames of hatred that scarred the landscape of post-war America.
In Flanders Fields
An Echo
Between the crosses, row on row
That
mark the graves where black men lie;
Their souls, long wafted to the sky,
Look down upon the earth below.
E’en while we mourn their loss, we
see
Their brothers hanged upon a tree
By whom they saved. Their pain fraught cry
By whom they saved. Their pain fraught cry
Mounts
up to those who stand on high
And watch the scarlet flowered sea
In
Flanders fields.
In Flanders fields they shall not
sleep!
No! For their murdered kin they keep
A
vigil through the day and night,
‘Til
God Himself shall snatch from sight
Such scenes as make our heroes weep
In
Flanders fields.
—Orlando C. W. Taylor (1920, Dunbar Entertainer)
The Tuskegee Institute
estimates that in the 86 years between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,743 people were
lynched in the United States; 3,446 of them were African Americans. As African
American troops returned home from the war that had “promised to make the world
safe for democracy,” they confronted a new battle:
Many black
veterans were denied the benefits and disability pay they’d been promised. In
the first summer after the war, known as the Red Summer, anti-black riots
erupted in more than twenty American cities, including Houston, Chicago, and
Washington, D.C. “This is the right time to show them what will and what will
not be permitted, and thus save them much trouble in the future,” one Louisiana
newspaper opined, in an editorial titled “Nip It In the Bud.” In the years
after the war, at least thirteen black veterans were lynched. Countless more
survived beatings, shootings, and whippings.***
The poem’s author, Orlanda
Capitola Ward Taylor, was born in Texas in 1891 and witnessed a lynching as a
young teen. An educator, journalist, and radio host, he is best known for
co-founding in 1925 New Orleans' first African American newspaper, The Louisiana Weekly, and for his pioneering work in black
radio broadcasting. He died in 1979.
----------------------------------------------------
*Gale,
Cengage Learning, A
Study Guide for John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,”2016.
**Amanda
Betts, In Flanders Fields: 100 Years
Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance, Knopf, 2015.
***
Peter C. Baker, “The
Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans,” The New Yorker, 27 November 2016.
Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteFred