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The Slave Ships

'ALL ready?' cried the captain;
'Ay, ay!' the seamen said;
'Heave up the worthless lubbers, —
The dying and the dead.'
Up from the slave-ship's prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust
'Now let the sharks look to it,—
Toss up the dead ones first!'
Corpse after corpse came.up, —
Death had been busy there;
Where every blow is mercy,
Why should the spoiler spare?
Corpse after corpse they cast
Sullenly from the ship,
Yet bloody with the traces
Of fetter-link and whip.
Gloomily stood the captain,
With his arms upon his breast,
With his cold brow sternly knotted,
And his iron lip compressed.

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Little Sado's story

Robert Sutcliff, in his book of travels in America, relates the incident
which has suggested the following lines. Little Sado was an African
boy, who was rescued from a slave-ship by a United States’ frigate, and
provided by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society with a home, in a
respectable family, near Philadelphia.

“Although tended with the greatest tenderness,” says Sutcliff, “yet he
was often seen weeping at the recollection of his near connexions. He
said that himself and sister were on a visit, at a relation's, and that
after the family had retired to rest, they were suddenly alarmed at the
dead of night, by a company of man-stealers breaking into their
habitation. They were all carried off towards the sea, where they arrived
at the end of three days, and were confined until the vessel sailed.

“Not long after this negro boy had been brought into S. P.'s family, he
was taken ill of a bad fever; and for a time there appeared but little
hopes of his recovery, although the best medical help was obtained, and
every kindness and attention shown him.

“There being now scarcely any prospect of his recovery, his mistress

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poem by Elizabeth Margaret Chandler from Poetical Works (1836)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Freedom's in the air

‘Let Justice be done,
though the heavens may fall’…

Now the overnight, merciful dew
has fallen on the hottest July day
on record, (why does it give us
some sorta touch of personal pride?)
and on my rant of yesterday
about a Britain of whose recent past
I’m more than a little ashamed
in my rather downplayed English way... then
the wickedly and useful perverse mind
turns to what’s good; and
in Saint Augustine’s succinct words,
I exist; I know that I exist; and
I am happy to know that I exist..

It’s hot again today; in London here
a good place to be is hign above London
on Hampstead Heath with its fresher,

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Christian Slave

A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!
Who bids for God's own image? for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?
My God! can such things be?
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one
Is even done to Thee?
In that sad victim, then,
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand;
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again!
A Christian up for sale!
Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame, Her patience shall not fail!
A heathen hand might deal
Back on your heads the gathered wrong of years:
But her low, broken prayer and nightly tears,
Ye neither heed nor feel.
Con well thy lesson o'er,

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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At Washington

WITH a cold and wintry noon-light.
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with t e sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping.
For the largess, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor's wealth for party's place;
Step by step on Freedom's charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace;
For to-day's poor pittance turning from the great hope of their race.

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Slave Driver

Slave driver the table is turned
Catch a fire so you can get burned
Slave driver the table is turned
Catch a fire you're gonna get burned

Ev'ry time I hear a crack of the whip
My blood runs cold

I remember on the slave ship
How they brutalised their very souls
Today they say that we are free
Only to be chained in poverty

Good god

song performed by Bob Marley from Catch A Fire
Added by Lucian Velea
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Invisible Man

Kunta Kinte's Gambia,
Of many Africans taken away during the Slavery days;
But today, the 44th U.S. President has his roots in Africa!

It was 1530 to the Slave Trade,
But the first Slave-Ship landed in Virginia in 1619;
And we are all part of the Dream today.

'Male and Female Slaves for sale',
A Ship from Angola landed in Jamestown in 1619;
And those were the Slavery Days gone by.

Today, the White House is ready for the First Black Family;
With Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Rock 'n' Roll, Soul, Funk, Hip-Hop and Rap.
Like the days of the invisible man,
Like the days of their hardships,
Like the days of the way forward without hope;
So take a leraning tour on this poem.

Booker.T. Wasshington,

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poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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The Preacher

Its windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south;
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor-bar.

Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay,
Of clouds through which the setting day
Flung a slant glory far away.
It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
It flamed upon the city's panes,
Smote the white sails of ships that wore

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Faulkner Going Home

Faulkner writes at a New Orleans café
Dust and floorboards with cockroaches
Coffee like pain from the slave trade
French rolls, wrought iron in the warm rain
Spanish gables sigh like lost angels
We are the immaculate children of Tolstoy
Dreams of William Blake
Bayou of the damned
Napoleon dies marooned like a pauper
Mice and men screams like a prophecy
Your lovely breasts belong to the working class
You run from every proletariat poet

Bridges like leather swamps
Magnolia eyes hidden beneath English men
Celtic mountains like pockets of gold
She smiles like the French Quarter
We walk brick streets made from conquistadors
Across the square their playing strip tease
Winners dance like Chloe’s of the Marquis de Sade

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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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So Desperate!

The budget statement,
The new slave-ship,
So desperate!
But officially recognised like a whistle blower;
However, many people are still hungry in the land of opportunity.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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