[…]

Cleo

Born of a slave mother and father, she toiled

in the fields, loved the earth and the sun,

and was strong.

At evening the going down of the sun told her

whether she was written in the book of God as

a good or a bad woman for that day.

In the gloaming of a long autumn day she told

friends, “Every one of us got a baby inside de

body. When de rest of de body shuffle off, dis

baby go to Jesus. Dare is wings waitin’ to be

hitched on. Atter dat, you is angel.”

The fields and the earth were kind to her.

Black Prophetess

I makes my livin’ washin’.

I keeps happy at the feet of Jesus.

My husband ain’t saved; he’s wicked:

but the Bible says a sanctified wife

shall sanctify her husband and save him.

I’m livin’ in Chicago

but I calls Ohio my home

because I lived in Cincinnati

an’ Columbus an’ Toledo

an’ I was in Dayton

a week before the waters swept Dayton

an’ I stood on the public square

an’ warned ‘em of destruction.

I got four permits from the police in Chicago

to stand on the street corners

and warn the people of destruction.

I told ’em about the Eastland and the war

before those things happened.

Three years ago the police gave me my last permit

to warn the people of destruction

an’ I got a right to stand on any corner

south of Twelfth Street.

They tell me it’s a free country

an’ I can talk God’s destruction all I want

just so I don’t come downtown.

I got five daughters.

The oldest is in Philadelphia.

She makes prophecies too.

I make prophecies when the spirit moves me.

Yesterday I felt the spirit stirrin’ me up.

I saw blood up to the bridles of the horses.

I saw the mark of the Beast.

(When the Bible speaks of a Beast it means a King.)

The Kings all got to go.

God is cleansing the earth.

He’s goin’ to make it all clean

and Jesus is goin’ to come again

an’ live a thousand years.

I go to the newspapers with my prophecies

but they don’t print ’em.

If you print this—

when will it be in the paper?

Elizabeth Umpstead

I am Elizabeth Umpstead, dead at seventy-five years of age, and they are taking me in a polished and silver-plated box today, and an undertaker, assured of cash for his work, will supply straps to let the box down the lean dirt walls, while a quartet of singers—assured of cash for their work, sing “Nearer My God to Thee,” and a clergyman, also assured of cash for his services—will pronounce the words: “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes.”

I am gone from among the two-legged moving figures on top the earth now, and nobody will say my heart is someway wrong when I assert, I was the most beautiful nigger girl in northern Indiana; and men wanted my beauty, white men and black men—they wanted to take it and crush it and taste it—and I learned what they wanted and I traded on it; I schemed and haggled to get all I could for it—and so, I am one nigger girl who today has a grand funeral with all the servitors paid in spot cash.